No one knows that these 3 popular startups are Czech

3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 290

News 1. Kiwi.com flight search for travel hackers is from Brno

Kiwi.com is one of the popular (more than 100m searches per day) international flight search engines, with an innovative twist: they call it “virtual interlining”. The Kiwi algorithm can combine connecting flights from different airports or suggest flying from a different close by city, taking connecting flights from another airport in the same city etc. all combinations to find the cheapest possible connection. Opinion: Among low budget travellers worldwide Kiwi.com is known as the search engine to find the absolute cheapest possible way to fly to your destination, or finding a connection that fits the budget without knowing where to go.

A global leader in flight search is based in Brno, a small city with a tiny airport and only a handful of flights.

News 2. Rohlik in an expansion mode (knuspr.de, gurkerl.at)

Rohlik is one of the older, original players in European grocery delivery, founded in 2014. Entered German market in 2021 (Knuspr.de) with ambitious goal of $1.2bn until 2024. Rohlik’s delivery vans are already everywhere around some Eastern European metropolis like Prague and Budapest. Expansion is ahead. Opinion: Rohlik has gone a pragmatic way, expanding from one region to another. A region they can deliver within 100 km with distribution centres. Similar to the Dutch Picnic concept. Now Rohlik expands in the Rhine-Main region (Frankfurt) and announces entering Romania, Italy and Spain.

Region by region, distribution centre by distribution centre.

News 3. Integromat (now Make) — the popular “light version of UI Path”

Integromat is a robotic process automation tool, a platform to connect different softwares and automate processes. In the field of robotic process automation, Integromat is the more basic solution than UI Path, kind of the “light version” with less capabilities but a lot cheaper. More like Zapier, than UI Path. Acquired by Celonis in 2020 and last month rebranded from Integromat to Make. Opinion: Low cost and simplicity make Integromat super popular among startups, many use it to automate simple processes e.g. in marketing.

Their now outdated Integromat website said “made with love in Prague”, is Make still made with love in Prague or by Celonis from Munich?

Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon Innovations (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting innovations in main tech geographies, AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with an opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch.

Come back next Monday and share your opinion.