New year, new fundings over 100 million in Europe, seldom enough.

3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 368

Picnic from Amsterdam, €355m VC funding

Picnic is an acknowledged leader in grocery delivery with electric vehicles in NL and Germany. Delivery only in pre-selected timeslots, not on demand. Pre-selected timeslots for efficient route planning. New €355m VC funding in January, €1.3bn total funding. Opinion: Not fast delivery of … but slow and efficient delivery of groceries specifically. Delivered by a fleet of small electric delivery trucks. Advantage over Getir, Flink, etc. is the pre-selected delivery timeslot, Picnic can plan efficient routes. Picnic started in the Netherlands, expanding quickly into more German cities. Especially now with new fundings.

A leader is born and financed over 1 billion.

Finn from Munich €100m VC funding

Finn offers car subscriptions, mainly for premium cars like Tesla, BMW, and Audi. Subscription means all the costs of running a car (except fuel) are summed up in one monthly rate. Plus additional services like maintenance. Now with total funding of $1bn, $790m of which is debt, which Finn uses to finance the cars. Opinion: Customers like the flexibility of Finn, they choose a minimum subscription duration (e.g. 12 months) after which they can choose a new car. Currently, Finn is working on establishing itself in the US market (after launching in the German market). The new funding will help to compete with car subscription offerings from car manufacturers themselves like Volvo.

Not many German startups enter the US successfully, even less with the US being just their second market to launch. Let’s see if Finn’s approach is successful!

Pliant from Berlin €100m debt financing

Pliant offers customisable corporate credit cards, credit cards for employees and business expenses. Besides employee credit cards, companies can issue credit cards for their customers with Pliant white label. A busy market of credit card offerings for smaller companies. Opinion: Customisable cards meaning cards can be blocked or allowed for specific expenses e.g. marketing or travel expenses. Card limits can be set flexibly and cards can be issued as single-use cards. Now with €100m debt + €8m additional VC funding to grow.

More flexible than many corporate credit card offerings from traditional banks, reluctant to enter the market fully.