Two years after its official opening in Bulgaria, Bosch Engineering Center Sofia has doubled in size and is about to open a second office in Sofia. It will be located on two floors in the new Synergy Tower business building in Sofia Tech Park.
The center plans to increase its staff to over 450 people by the end of the year. The teams will work on the next innovative projects and technologies for the automotive industry in areas such as driver assistance systems, automated driving, artificial intelligence, and electric mobility. Bosch Engineering Center Sofia aims to become a hub for complete products by creating departments for hardware and mechanical design in addition to well-developed system and software areas, the company announced in an official statement.
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Just seven months after the close of a $ 20 million round of Series A funding, Sofia’s Payhawk announced another Series B investment of USD 112 million. The raised capital came from the San Francisco-based Greenoaks Fund. It is the second-largest Series B investment for B2B companies in the region of Central and Eastern Europe after the Romanian UiPath. So far, the Bulgarian company has attracted a total of 136 million dollars.
The Bulgarian fintech, which was launched three years ago, is currently estimated at USD 570 million. Payhawk serves companies in 27 countries in Europe through payment cards and a cost management platform. The team currently has offices in London, Berlin, and Barcelona and wants to open new offices in the United States, the Netherlands, France, Australia, and Singapore. The fintech will use the new investment to accelerate its development by launching a credit card and cheap cross-border transfer service in the first quarter of 2022 as an alternative to SWIFT payments.
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Silver Star, the general distributor of Mercedes-Benz for Bulgaria has started the construction of its own multifunctional complex in the industrial zone of Kremikovtzi district in Sofia with an investment of EUR 18 million. The new home of Silver Star and Mercedes-Benz in Sofia will be located on an area of over 65,000 sq. m. After its construction, the building will welcome its customers in a two-storey modernist showroom of 1,700 sq. m. cars and newly equipped services for cars and trucks on an area of 8700 sq. m.
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The leading Sofia-based producer and distributor of organic food “Smart Organic” AD received approval from the Bulgarian Stock Exchange to make an initial public offering of shares on the BEAM market for growth and successfully placed in just a few weeks all offered shares, which gave it a market capitalization of nearly BGN 195 million.
The company will invest the raised funds in the construction of a new production unit and the acquisition of a competitive company in Germany. Smart Organic has a factory in Sofia with an area of 6,000 sq. m. for the production of organic energy and protein bars under the Roobar brand, organic cookies, superfoods and vegetable proteins, salty snacks, and more. Nearly 70% of the production is exported to over 60 countries around the world, with the largest export markets being Germany, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, the Benelux, Spain, France, Romania, and the Middle East. The company wants to expand its production capacity with the construction of a new building and a solar park and plans to complete their construction by the middle of next year.
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Sofia’s proptech OfficeRnD raised USD 10 million to accelerate its growth and increase its market share. The main investor is the US-based Runa Capital, with the participation of previous investors Flashpoint Venture Capital and LAUNCHub Ventures.
OfficeRnD is a product company with a platform for easy and convenient management of shared workspaces, business centers, and more through various functionalities such as issuing invoices, booking seats, service management, and much more. The platform already has over 1,000 customers and supports the work of tenants and employees in the increased demand for flexible workspaces due to the pandemic. The main part of the OfficeRnD team is located in Sofia. This is where 100 of its experts work and nearly 20 more employees work in the company’s offices in Atlanta, London, and Melbourne. With the attracted investment, Proptech wants to expand mostly Sofia’s team of developers, as well as the team in Atlanta, USA.
Source: Sofia Investment Agency