00:10:39 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
France is also threatening to fine Apple and Google for abusive commercial practices through their app stores amid growing scrutiny from European authorities of the biggest Internet companies whose size and sway over data collection have rapidly made them advertising giants. Finance Minister Bruno Le Meagh said last Wednesday that France will take legal actions against Google and Apple and fines could be in the millions of euros. Fines are actually likely to be about €2,000,000 per company, which are accused of taking advantage of local developers. This comes after a two year investigation by the ministry's fraud repression units, according to an official in Le Mer's office. And now let's have a listen to our second interview, podcast featuring the founder and CEO of a very interesting startup called Anatomy Next. His name is Sandis Kondrats, and his company just won the Tech Chill startup pitching competition. To learn what they're all about, listen up. Hey. This is Robin Walters from tech.eu, and I'm here in Riga, Latvia, where I attend the Tech Show conference. And the winner of the startup competition of that conference, was a Latvian company called Anatomy Next. And I'm sitting now with Sandis, who's a co founder and CEO of the company. Can you briefly tell us what the startup does? [00:11:49] S2: Yeah. So Anatomy Next is human body simulator for medical training in virtual reality. It's just like a a Google Maps for human body or a flight simulator, but for the human body. [00:12:01] S0: Okay. And you work on multiple platforms and headsets already?
00:12:01 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
[00:12:01] S0: Okay. And you work on multiple platforms and headsets already? [00:12:05] S2: Exactly. Right now focusing on mixed reality, holographic devices, and having also product on desktop available and mobile devices. [00:12:15] S0: Great. And what's the target audience for this solution? [00:12:19] S2: Yeah, target audience are medical students and young millennial doctors. Great. And how's it going [00:12:25] S0: so far? How long has the company been around? [00:12:27] S2: Yeah, so company twenty fifteen started since then been developing the product and engaged with almost 70 medical institutions, both in US and Europe, doing really well as having a first paying customer, the number one US hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and involved with many other possible contracts down the road. It's Have [00:12:53] S0: you raised any funding so far? [00:12:54] S2: We did raise a 500,000 of euros twenty sixteen-seventeen winter. [00:13:00] S0: What's the next step for the company? What's 2018 going to be like [00:13:03] S2: for you? Yeah, 2018. So we are now about to close a 500,000 of dollars round and now scaling up the sales and marketing, both in The US and Europe, and going to participate in main education conferences like Health2O in Barcelona will happen in May, as well as for you in The US to scale up. [00:13:26] S0: Well, that's definitely very cool if you actually try it. It's very hard to explain, of course, in an audio interview, but what's the secret sauce of this? What makes you special compared to other competitors out there?
00:13:26 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
[00:13:26] S0: Well, that's definitely very cool if you actually try it. It's very hard to explain, of course, in an audio interview, but what's the secret sauce of this? What makes you special compared to other competitors out there? [00:13:37] S2: Mhmm. Yeah. So it is a... The team, the composition of the team, and a... Our location culture behind it, because the product is developed by programmers, three d artists, and medics. And so our team, the medics programmers and three d artists, work closely together. They speak Latin. They understand the programming languages, and this is not possible elsewhere. Here in Latvia are really high level medical education professionals, and they are accessible because this country is small, we know each other, we know each other's sort of culture and the language, and are highly supported from the University of Latvia and the Rigsons University. So we get access to the latest medical technology and data. So it is a team. That's the key. Great. [00:14:28] S0: You focus on a pretty specific target audience today. Can you also think of other use cases down the line as the company expands and scales that you might get into?
00:14:28 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
[00:14:28] S0: You focus on a pretty specific target audience today. Can you also think of other use cases down the line as the company expands and scales that you might get into? [00:14:37] S2: Yeah, so currently focusing on the medical students' education and then a case for emergency medicine simulation. But down the road, that's a second part of this year, it's a neurosurgery, it is a craniofacial surgery, and also orthopedic surgery simulators in our pipeline. We will stay in the medical field. Absolutely. That's our competence and our nation, our mission to save millions of lives around the world. So we are doing through education, training, resources and simulation solutions. [00:15:19] S0: Right, well that's absolutely a great mission to have. But you have an interesting background because you don't come from a medical background. Can you briefly share what you used to do before [00:15:28] S2: this time? Yeah, so I come from the Renaissance style art, specifically sculpture. It's like a Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci style education. As you know, Leonardo da Vinci was anatomist, and artist and architect at the same time. So this type of education also I had here in Latvia and learn the human body, the surface anatomy through sculpting experiences. Yeah. [00:15:55] S0: Absolutely. Great background and great company. Congratulations again on winning the startup competition and best of luck with the company this year. [00:16:02] S2: Thank you, sir.
00:16:05 · Robin Walters
[00:16:05] S0: Also want to keep a very close eye on. Some more interesting news to note. Microsoft has reported the opening two cloud data centers in Germany at a cost running to more than a €100,000,000. The data centers would allow customers of Microsoft, which of course competes with Amazon and Google in the $260,000,000,000 cloud computing market to keep data in Germany, which has relatively strict privacy laws. In other very country specific news, Finland's state investment arm has spent about €844,000,000, that's more than 1,000,000,000 US dollars, on building a 3.3% stake in Nokia, strengthening the national influence over the telecom network gear maker. Nokia currently employs 6,300 people in Finland, off a global workforce of about 102,800, but it still remains the country's largest company. So that's a very interesting move by Finland's state investment arm. Going back to funding for startups, UiPath, which is an automation software company originally founded in Bucharest, Romania, has raised $153,000,000 a Series B round led by Excel with participation from Capital G, Kleine Perkins, Caulfield and Beiers, Early Bird, Creative Ventures and Seed Camp. The company, which is now headquartered in New York, develops enterprise robotic process automation software for automating business processes and ensuring compliance. Meanwhile, there's German IoT startup Relayr. They've raised $30,000,000 in funding rounds led by Deutsche Telekom with participation from, again, Kleiner Perkins along with Munich Re and others. And then we have Moovit, which is the Israeli transportation service startup whose iOS, Android and web apps are now used by 120,000,000 people globally across 2,000 cities in 80 countries, has raised about $50,000,000 in new funding. The Series D round was led by Intel Capital and is actually strategic investment. As part of it, Mobileye, which is the $15,300,000,000 Intel subsidiary that builds autonomous driving solutions, will be partnering with Moovit to incorporate its data into its proprietary navigation system. We are going to end the podcast with a number of acquisitions in European tech as well. Of note in particular was that European independent fiber network and cloud networking provider Interoute has been acquired by US cloud networking firm, GTT Communications for €1,900,000,000 in an all cash deal.
00:18:17 · Robin Walters
Experian also made headlines by acquiring ClearScore, which has built a platform that offers you a credit score, which it then uses to suggest financial products like credit cards that fit the bill. Experian is acquiring UK based Clearscore for about $385,000,000 US dollars plus an unspecified earnout based on future performance. The deal is expected to close later this year. Clearscore has around 6,000,000 users and has only disclosed around 15,600,000 in funding. So this deal appears at least to provide a very, very nice return for its investors. German automaker Daimler meanwhile has coughed up about €70,000,000 to buy the remaining 25% of car sharing company, Kart2Go, that it did not already own, valuing the startup thus at €280,000,000 And finally we have SK Telecoms, which has acquired Switzerland based ID Quantique, which is a company that provides quantum safe cryptography solutions. The South Korean telco bought over 50% majority share of the firm for about 70,000,000,000 won, which is about 65,000,000 US dollars. That's it for this edition of the podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. And we'll be back soon with a new episode. If you can, you should also check out a few events that we are partnering with in the coming months. Firstly, we're co organizing a conference on cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and blockchain technologies. The event is called Crypto Capital World and the first summit will take place on twenty five and twenty six April in Fylnius, Lithuania. The website is simply cryptocapitalworld.com. And the second event we'd like to feature is the Ant Summithem Festival in Leuven, Belgium, which is promising to be a one of a kind event at the intersection of health, tech, and creativity. And that one takes place from two to five May. The website is Andleuven, that's A N D L E U V E N Dot Com. That's it, folks. Please subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already. Tell all your friends and enemies about it, and follow us on Twitter. We're at tech underscore eu or Facebook for regular updates on all things European tech. Thank you for listening. This is Robin Vloggers. Checking out. Ciao.