Greek citizen engagement platform Novoville raises £ 1.2m to further develop its platform and increase its presence in Britain and Europe, Greek media reported. The round was led by British fund Beacon Capital, but also VentureFriends, UniFund, iQbility together with the existing shareholders PJ Tech Catalyst and Public Group International UK Ltd participated in the round.
“We are very pleased to have completed this funding round and have the confidence and support of major British and Greek investors for our next steps in new markets in Europe”, said Fotis Talantzis and Iraklis Bourantas co-founders of Novoville, the website Startupper.gr reported.
For the already existing partner PJ Tech Catalyst Fund it would be a pleasure together with a larger group of the investor to support the vision of Novoville.
“We are very pleased to be working with a larger group of investors to continue supporting the vision of founders to bring e-government closer to citizens across the EU”, says Io Tsakonas, CEO of PJ Tech Catalyst Fund of Piraeus Bank, the same website reported.
UniFund’s Partner Sotiris Papantonopoulos-Mandopoulos, confirmed the same.
“Novoville is changing the data in the field of citizens’ involvement and interaction with their municipality, adding value to both themselves and the municipalities. We are very happy to be part of this effort. ”
Founded in 2016 Novoville is a citizen engagement platform that facilitates end-to-end communications between local authorities and their citizens. It consists of a free mobile app, web and chatbot interfaces through which the citizens can submit applications, report everyday issues, express their opinion in consultations, to be directly informed about important issues of their municipality and to make electronic payments, thus significantly facilitating their interaction with the Municipality.
On the other hand, municipalities have access to a number of online tools and access to many live statistics and data that enable them to make informed decisions and offer better services to their citizens while saving significant resources.
To date, Novoville platform is used by 45 municipalities in 4 European countries and has more than 150,000 users already, and three weeks ago it was promoted by the Mayor of Athens.
Just a few months ago, in December, this startup was named as one of Europe’s top 10 startups in Government Technology during the European GovTech Summit in Paris.
Beacon Capital invests in entrepreneurs who are able to articulate a clear market opportunity and are committed to building a substantial business. The VC provides funding and, vitally, expertise based on their experience from having invested in, and worked with, entrepreneurs who transformed their industries. The company invests in B2B enterprise technology ventures at pre-series A stage that is raising between £0.5m to £2m.
In 2014, Beacon was awarded an allocation of funds from and is a partner of, the London Co-Investment Fund.