Portugal Ventures invested €13M in 70 companies in 2021

Portugal’s public venture capital company Portugal Ventures invested almost €13 million in 70 companies in 2021.

Forty-eight of the 70 startups were added to Portugal Venture’s portfolio last year.
In addition to these 48 new companies, in which PV invested €8.3 million – the VC which is now part of the Portuguese public development bank Banco Português de Fomento – undertook 22 follow-on operations with an investment of €4.5 million in companies that had already been in the portfolio.
There was also six co-investment operations involving €13 million. The investments here involved Series A rounds for Jscrambler (Jscrambler is the leading client-side security solution for JavaScript in-app protection, detecting and blocking malicious behaviour in real-time and stopping Client-side Attacks) and PeekMed (PeekMed provides an intuitive surgical sectioning of a bone in order to correct its deformity).
However, 17 companies left the PV portfolio including divestments in Zaask to Worten, and Mercadão to Glovo. (*See Recommended article).
“In a year in which the only certainty was uncertainty, PV kept its focus: capitalising Portuguese companies which needed a financial input in order to grow and take advantage of fresh opportunities worldwide. In 2022 we will continue to work hand-in-glove with the companies in our portfolio, and with their teams our partners, contributing to the strengthening of the economy”, say the directors.
In a communiqué sent to the media on Thursday, PV states that the “entrepreneurial ecosystem is alive and kicking”, pointing out that it had received 297 applications for support last year — three out of four applications for projects in the digital and tourism areas, — with the amount of investment applied for totalling €74.9 million.
The typical applicant was male, aged 31-40, although PV notes “the ecosystem is changing, with a visible growth in entrepreneurs in the 41-50 age group”.
The 48 new companies in the Portugal Ventures portfolio are:

Digital: Redcatpig, Taikai, Spotlite, Bandora, Neroes, Cosmos.pic, One Care, Wall-i, Tesselo, Ccrave, United Boutiques
Engineering & Manufacturing: Watgrid, Reckonai, Cleanwatts, About Aqua Food, Beeyard, Bioworld, Eptune Engineering, Go Clever, Scemai, ihCare, Sky Powerlines, Klugit, Landratech, Corium Biotech, Core Protein, Sciven, Swatter, Neural Solar, UZME, Wakaru, Wysensing, Partner in Cream, S&DG, Flowco, Ablute, Aqva More, We Can Charge
Life Sciences: Insignals Neurotech, Nu-rise, RubyNanomed, HatiCancer, Wisify, FastCompChem, BestHealth4U
Tourism: Merytu (pictured), Sleep&Nature, The Independente Collective