There are many successful stories coming out of the Belgian startup scene, and Ghent can surely take pride in several household names like Showpad and Engagor that are now big players in the international market. With lots of research hubs, incubators, accelerators and a renowned university, it is no wonder that Ghent is home to many high-performing companies.
(Author: Gabriela Fernández – Startups.be / Image Credit: iStock)
AWINGU
Launched in 2011, Awingu develops software to simplify enterprise mobility and liberate legacy applications. Besides Ghent, the company has offices in New York and San Francisco. Earlier this year, Awingu secured an investment of €2.65M and was later selected to represent Belgium during the second edition of the ‘Startup Europe comes to Silicon Valley’ program. During the week-long event, 18 European tech startups engage with important U.S. industry players for sales, funding, and collaboration opportunities.
See more at awingu.com
HAPPY FLIGHTS
Launched in 2014, Happy Flights manages flight issues under EU regulation 261 and helps travellers and travel agents claim compensation after negative flying experiences. The startup entered the spotlight after winning an important lawsuit against low-cost airline Ryanair.
See more at happyflights.eu
INTUO
Launched in 2013, Intuo is a talent management SaaS suite that unlocks the true potential of people, teams and ultimately their organizations. They translate a company’s mission into agile objectives and make sure they are aligned with every single person within the company. Back in May, Intuo received €850,000 to further develop its 360-degree talent management software. The funding came from PMV and a number of angel investors from the HR, retail, and petrochemical sectors.
See more at intuo.io
ITEXT
Launched in 2008, iText is the world’s most used and actively developed PDF library empowering millions of developers to embed rich PDF functionality into websites or business applications programmatically. iText is no newbie but it is always exciting to keep an eye on it. The well-documented PDF developer library currently has over 5,000 customers worldwide, in fields as diverse as finance, government, healthcare and technology. iText became Belgium’s national Champion at the European Business Awards 2016. Back in 2015, the Belgian company earned the Silver category at the Best in Biz Awards International for small or medium business product of the year.
See more at itextpdf.com
MOOVLY
Launched in 2013, Moovly is an online SaaS platform that makes multimedia content creation easy. It recently partnered up with stock media provider VideoBlocks, adding over half a million multimedia content assets, valued at over USD $10 million, to its platform. This partnership propels Moovly into a clear content leadership position over its nearest rival.
See more at moovly.com
OJOO
Launched in 2014, OJOO is a platform to create mobile games without coding. Drag and drop your content, add challenges and rewards and let people play it anywhere. In 2015, the startup got a €1M cash injection to boost its international expansion.
See more at ojoo.com
ONTOFORCE
Launched in 2011, Ontoforce is a leading company in semantic technologies with an innovative solution to improve information management. The company raised €2.1M back in July to open an office in the U.S. and to hire additional product developers and data scientists.
See more at ontoforce.com
PIESYNC
Launched in 2012, PieSync is a platform that connects your cloud applications and syncs your contacts two-way and in real time. It raised €1.5 M to expand the list of supported SaaS applications and scale business growth. The plan is ambitious: the company’s goal is to connect 200 major SaaS applications by 2017, and over 500 by 2018.
See more at piesync.com
POZYX LABS
Launched in 2015, Pozyx Labs is a startup dedicated to the development of hardware and software products for indoor localization. The pozyx system is a hardware solution that provides accurate positioning and motion information. A few weeks ago, Pozyx Labs defeated 34 companies and won the Innovation of Things award at the Internet of Things World, one of the biggest internet of things events.
See more at pozyx.io
TEAMLEADER
Launched in 2012, Teamleader brings CRM, project management and invoicing together with an intuitive software solution to enable teams to collaborate, organize and build their businesses in a more efficient way. The last two years have seen Teamleader winning The Next Web Boost competition in 2015, expanding to Germany, Holland and Spain, taking home the Startup of the Year 2016 Award at Tech Startup Day, and most recently, securing €10M in Series B funding from Fortina Capital.
Discover more on teamleader.eu
This article was first published in the Winter issue of SILICON magazine. Be the first to read SILICON articles on paper before they’re posted online, plus read exclusive features and interviews that only appear in the print edition, by subscribing online.
Clever.be is also off to an impressive start. Founded in 2016 they develop intelligent solutions using Artificial Intelligence. Already named in the Top 50 Startups to invest in by Trends-Tendances, already generating a decent revenu AND profit in their first year. In 2017, they are planning to double their staff and raise capital to fund their international expansion.