Portugal Ventures triples 2018’s investment

Portugal Ventures,  the public agency for risk and capital management currently managing over 200M€ in investments, invested 9M€ in 14 startups in the first semester of the year, whose balance was now published.

The figures more than tripled the 2018’s. Last year, Portugal Ventures invested a total of 2.4M€ in five new companies, focusing its investment efforts on reinforcing previous investments by injecting capital in them. Rita Marques is now President of the agency, succeeding Celso Guedes de Carvalho. in 2017, Portugal Ventures has invested little more than a million euros in six new companies.

“The new investments represent the importance of Portugal Ventures in the dynamisation of the market together with other investment partners”, Rita Marques explained. “Finishing this semester with such an investment volume is also proof of the commitment of Portugal Ventures’ team and the work we have been developing since May 2018”.

One year ago, in July 2018, Rita Marques spoke of recentring the strategy in monitoring and making the existing investments smarter. This year, in February, Portugal Ventures announced the three first investments of the year in half a million euros. These new investments were made in the startups Azitek, Beamian, CellmAbs, Chemitek, Fyde, Lovys, Noocity and TargTex and altogether represent a total investment of five million euros in partnership with Ignition Capital Network and other international partners.

The remaining 2.8M€ were invested together with other investors. To these investments, one can add the touristic startups as a result of the Call Tourism initiative, announced on the 6th June.

As regarding the sectors the money was invested in, Portugal Ventures spread its investment over two digital, four engineering-related and other two life-science startups. Three of those eight investments were made together with national and international stakeholders, as Rita Marques revealed this to be one of the strategies in place for the agency. “The goal is to join other players to invest more, but always in a supplementary perspective of attracting to business the so-called smart investment”.

“With these investments, Portugal Ventures will integrate into its portfolio a couple of enterprises that bring along with them relevant synergies on knowledge and experience exchange as well as business opportunities”.