Welcome to the #436 edition of Dealflow.es: a weekly summary of everything that happened in the Spanish startup and tech investing ecosystem.

It’s interesting to see Inditex open up to new projects and initiatives. The Galician fashion giant has always been known for keeping a low profile in pretty much everything that it does, but in the past few years it seems to be opening up to testing new ideas. Many of those startup or investment related.

Online sales already account for 25% of Inditex’s total revenues, lately it has been more active in terms of tech investments, having backed several non-Spanish companies in the sustainability and new materials sector, and last week it was also disclosed that it has launched an investment vehicle with the help of Mundi to back even more companies. To keep an eye on.

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Zenital:

Today's market is fast moving, and it is not always easy to find the processes that need to be improved to enhance your business performance.

We understand that many tasks can become tedious and time-consuming pulling your focus away from your core business operations. That's where zenital comes in. We focus on optimizing and automating your data systems with advanced solutions in data engineering, AI and RPA to ensure quality at scale.

We’ve developed a simple questionnaire to help you quickly identify and prioritize key processes. By answering just a few questions, you will receive a detailed report of your processes, with a prioritized list of metrics, helping you make informed decisions about where to start optimizing your business operations

Interested in receiving your personalized report? Contact us and stop spending time on repetitive tasks. Let us handle the heavy lifting!

Startup funding news 💸

Spanish startups are increasingly turning to debt refinancing to complement equity rounds. Now some companies like Jobandtalent and Colvin are navigating complex restructuring processes to ease the impact and repayment of debt. Jobandtalent is has raised more than €600M in debt over the years with Blackrock and Citi, while Colvin is negotiating with creditors

Bilbao and US-based MiLaboratories gets $10M for a platform play to accelerate genomic research. The new round of funding was led by us at Kfund, with participation of Speedinvest and other investors. We wrote about the investment here

Madrid-based pet funeral services startup, Depet, closed a funding round of €5M, led by Transition Capital, Actyus Growth Finance, Grupo Nogar, and Agroalimentación Mendoza

Madrid-based Ciudadela raised €2.7M to digitize property management. The funding round included Athos Capital, Archipélago Next, Wayra, Big Sur Ventures, Finaves, and several individual investors such as Jobandtalent founders Juan Urdiales and Felipe Navío

Madrid-based miResi, a platform to help families find elderly care, raised €2M from Creas

Barcelona-based Fabbric raised €1.25M in a seed investment round to digitize the design and management process of fashion collections

Madrid-based startup Quixotic closed a funding round of €1.3M, co-led by Demium and Bynd Venture Capital, to accelerate its cloud energy management platform

Other rounds of funding:

• Anyformat: €520k, AI to analyze unstructured data

Other news:

• Valencia-based Imperia SCM, a startup that digitizes supply chains, seeks to raise €15M in a new funding round to expand into European markets such as France, the United Kingdom, and Italy

M&A news 🚀

Not really a tech startup, but it has raised funding from tech VCs in Spain, Portugal and Europe: Impress, a Catalan company, has acquired DrSmile, a chain of invisible orthodontics with 500 clinics in seven European countries, including Germany and Spain

SolarMente, the Spanish climate tech startup with Leonardo DiCaprio as a strategic investor, acquired Eltex, a company specializing in solar system installations. The combined company now employs 105 people and is projected to generate €1.2M in monthly revenue

Norwegian company LINK Mobility to strengthen its leadership in the Spanish SMS market after acquiring Net Real Solutions (NRS). The integration will allow NRS to offer advanced and diversified solutions, consolidating LINK as one of the main SMS providers in Spain

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

According to El Confidencial, Inditex has launched a €50M venture capital fund to invest in startups focused on textile innovation and sustainability. The fund will be managed by Mundi Ventures

Bankinter registered with the CNMV a new fund of funds called "Orion Fund FCR", advised by Kfund, with a capital of up to €200M. This fund, aimed at high net worth clients and institutional investors, will primarily invest in funds in the United States and Europe

Inbergune Capital Partners, a Basque investment firm in which Moira has a 60% stake, announced the launch of a new €10M fund to invest in biotech

Profile of French VC firm Cathay Innovation, a VC firm with €5 billion under management, views Spain as a key market for tech investments. Since 2017, it has invested in notable startups like Glovo, Wallbox, and Payflow, led by its partner Jacky Abitbol. Cathay has close ties with Seaya; they launched a fund together a few years ago to invest in Latam

Spanish funds active abroad:

• Mouro Capital, backed by Banco Santander, invested in Swiss agritech startup xFarm Technologies in a €36M round led by Partech

Fund news:

• Jordi Vidal promoted to Partner at Kibo Ventures

Other news:

• SeedRocket’s business angel campus is around the corner and will take place in Madrid on October 25th and 26th
  

Startup news 💡

Prophero, a property management marketplace, has surpassed its annual revenue target in the third quarter of 2024, reaching an annualized revenue of €27M. The company, which operates across Spain, Australia, Ireland, and Indonesia, says that it is on track for positive cash flow by mid-2025. More here

Fashion brand Minimalism opened its first retail store ever, in Madrid. Pepe Martin documented the whole process here, from choosing the location, legal docs, payments, etc

“How Metricool reached $15M ARR without external funding”: a profile of the social media management software company, detailing some of the levers they’ve used to achieve significant growth. Among them, a blog that attracts between 3 and 4 million monthly visits

For the first time, Spain’s Tax Agency (Hacienda) has allowed a non-banking entity, Qonto, to manage tax payments, marking a shift in the financial landscape. This service was often limited to banks

Fintech startup Monei has launched a service that allows small and medium-sized enterprises to make immediate payments to employees and suppliers through Bizum. Also related to Bizum, last week it was announced the possibility of Bizum NFC payments

Latitude launched its new iteration on Product Hunt: an open-source prompt engineering platform that helps devs and teams build, evaluate, and refine their prompts with AI

Neverless, a UK-based fintech founded by ex-Revolut executives, has chosen Barcelona for its expansion into Spain. The company recently raised €6M pre-seed round. Its investment app offers automated tools and access to over 400 cryptocurrencies

Interview with Ricardo Fernandez, CEO of Destinia. He mostly talks about macro changes within the industry, claiming that the increase in hotel prices is affecting Spain's competitiveness as a tourist destination

Iberdrola has appointed David Mesonero, a trusted man of its president Ignacio Sánchez Galán, as the new non-executive director at Wallbox. Iberdrole was once Wallbox’s main shareholder, but that’s no longer the case

Discover Holafly's eSIM for Business

With Holafly for Business, empower your teams with Unlimited Data and cost-saving mobile plans worldwide. More info here.

Big company & policy news 🤓

Inditex generated €409M in 2023 through online sales in markets where it has no physical stores, marking a 6.1% decline from the previous year due to opening new stores in some markets. However, its net margin from online-only markets rose to 17.5%, exceeding the global average of 15%. The company's digital strategy continues to grow, with online sales accounting for 25% of total revenue, and plans to further expand this channel

Indra will exclude its electoral process business from the sale of Minsait, its technology division

José María Álvarez-Pallete, president of Telefónica, stated that AI applications will generate 15% of the company's revenue growth by 2027

Interesting reads 🤓

French and US investment firm Red River West published “Can Spanish startups live the American dream?“

Ignacio Arriaga published “Buy vs Build: el eterno debate avivado por la IA“

Jose Ramon Perez Agüera, CTO at Mercadona Tech, wrote “Roadmaps: Desde Lombardo hacia el Futuro de la Planificación de Producto: La historia de los roadmaps de producto es, en muchos sentidos, un reflejo de la evolución del desarrollo de software en sí.”

Javi Santana (Tinybird) published “Sobre raíles”

Toño Huerta, a good friend and CEO of Secture, was interviewed to chat about the evolution of the Valencia startup ecosystem, among other topics: "En unos años, los grandes directivos habrán pasado antes por València"

David Bonilla wrote “La cláusula que no deberías firmar”