Early Game Ventures (EGV) announced the completion of an investment round in UniApply (vreaulafacultate.ro), a company developing a platform that eases the communication between universities and students, also the process of selecting the proper faculty and the application itself.
Simple Capital and angel investors participated to the round led by EGV. DLA Piper team (Cristina Bucur and Ciprian Frandeș) provided legal assistance to the deal.
“We are witnessing a revolution in education, determined primarily by the COVID pandemic, but also by the natural evolution of the system,” said Dan Călugareanu, partner in EGV, who initiated the deal. “We anticipate that this revolution will leave deep marks into Romanian education sector, as well. That is why we strongly believe that UniApply and the platforms developed by the company, vreaulafacultate.ro and uniapply.org, provide the necessary technological infrastructure to continue the digitalization of education. We are heading to a world where access to education has no borders and the UniApply team makes this easier to achieve. It is a noble mission, which we believe in and want to support through our capital, connections and resources.”
“We want to liberalize education and give each student a fair chance to find the appropriate university. We reduce dropout rates by helping students understand their options, but especially by working closely with them and using modern technologies such as ML and RPA to streamline all processes. The application is fully automated through our platform, but is extremly important to choose the right university and then let the magic of Uniapply do the rest. So far, 13.000 students applied to an university using our platform, those people succeding to fulfil their dreams. We have started our international journey two months ago and, in 5 years from now on, we want to count more than one million students applying through our platforms. Education is the future and we bring education closer to people”, stated Andrei Nicolae, on eof the founders of UniApply.
Early Game Ventures (EGV) is a venture capital firm funded mostly through the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
The European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank Group and is the leading risk financier for Europe’s SMEs through venture capital, collateral, and microfinance instruments. In Romania, the EIF implements financial instruments co-financed through structural and investment funds, such as JEREMIE 2007-2013, SME Initiative, ROP, JOP, NRDP.
The Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020 (POC) makes investments to address the needs and challenges raised by the low levels of economic competitiveness, in particular with regards to (a) insufficient support for research, development and innovation and (b) underdeveloped infrastructure for Information and Communication Technology. POC benefits from a € 1.33 billion allocation from the European Regional Development Fund.