The MENA region arm of Romania’s largest community for employees is expanding its operations following a euro 1 million round of late-seed funding led by Bulgarian investment fund, Sofia Angels Ventures. Known in Romania as Undelucram, the community is renowned as one of the largest in the CEE region, and its regional platform, A3malouna, is set to benefit from the recent round of investment.
Amassing over 200,000 users in the region during its first year of operation, A3malouna.com will be part of the plans to drive forward the Undelucram.ro business model, which will include the development of machine learning and AI algorithms. Aiming to capitalize on accelerating economic growth and the potential of the working population in the region, the company anticipates a three-fold increase in users, to 600,000 in the coming year. The investment funding is also expected to be used for further expansion across CEE, Asia and Africa, with the aim to have more than 4 million users and a thousand customers by the end of 2024.
Undelucram.ro was launched in 2011 by entrepreneur, Costin Tudor, and has become the regional network of online employer branding and recruitment platforms WhereWeWork.com. It provides information about employers, salaries, benefits and how job interviews are conducted. Undelucram.ro has the largest online employee community in Romania and one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, with over 1.5 million employees on the platform regionally.
The business has so far attracted four rounds of investments totalling €2,000,000, the earlier rounds being in 2017, 2019 and 2021. The lead investor in the most recent round was Sofia Angels Ventures, a Bulgarian investment fund, which invested €400,000. They were joined by investment fund, Gapminder VC (€200,000, third investment in Undelucram.ro), Head North (€200,000), technology start-up co-investment platform, SeedBlink (€100,000, follow-on), and a business angel (€100,000).
The company began expanding outside of Romania in 2019, initially in Central and Eastern Europe, and from 2022, outside of Europe. The network currently has operations in 14 countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Ukraine, Moldova, Czech Republic, Poland and the MENA area; Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
WhereWeWork platforms are in local languages and are tailored to each country. The community operates on a business-to-business model based on an annual subscription and the service is available in both the Employer Branding and Online Recruitment areas. The platform is based on machine learning algorithms and aggregated user data, matching the interests of candidates in the job market with those of employers.
Costin Tudor, CEO of WhereWeWork.com platforms said, “This is our fourth investment round, and we are glad to have long-standing partners with us; partners who have trusted us for the second and third time and who know that a dream like labour market transparency can take years. We will continue to expand regionally, to invest in machine learning and AI, but above all we will continue to provide information that really makes a difference for our users whether we are talking about employees, future employees or employers.”
Representing the lead funders, Milen Ivanov, Managing Partner of Sofia Angels Ventures remarked, “Undelucram has developed a business with a growth model with very high potential for scaling in the HR field, thanks to developing a new, transparent way of interacting between employers and employees. We really liked the fact that the team is very savvy in digital marketing services, but also in technology and HR, takes risks and wants to grow fast. We believe that this investment can give us a good return on investment, the development plan is realistic and validated by the market.”
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