British tech-fund searching for the next Danish IT gem

20 million kroner to be invested into app concepts

The British-based venture capital fund AppIdea is looking to invest about 19 million kroner into Danish tech-startups as part of a concept that makes use of Scandinavian innovation and eastern-European program development.

Mikheil Chkhartishvili, the managing partner and chairman of AppIdea, is attracted to Scandinavia because of the region's creativity and critical approach to new ideas.

”If it can make it here, it can make it anywhere, so to speak,” Chkhartishvili told the Copenhagen Post.

”The region has already shown itself capable of breaking through with global concepts such as Skype, Instagram or Spotify, and that's why we want to come in and make contact with the next Janus Friis or Kevin Systrom at an early stage.”

AppIdea is aiming to invest in apps concerning B2B2C (Business to Business to Consumer) concepts and sharing economies, and it is looking to invest between 1.5 and 2.5 million kroner into each prospective concept and make a total of about ten investments.

READ MORE: Danish history-app selected for coveted award

Copenhagen meeting
Appldea already enjoys a strong programming-development foothold in Georgia and the Caucasus region, and the company sees a prospective co-operation between Danish innovation and Georgian technical capability as a winning combination.

”Eastern Europe is rapidly rising to become the next Silicon Valley for tech-production,” Chkhartishvili, who himself is of a Georgian background, said.

”It's a thriving topic in tech circles these days and justly so due to two logical reasons: we are skilled as a people when it comes to mathematics and eastern Europe offers cheaper labour.”

It's early days, but Chkhartishvili will be coming to Copenhagen in January to meet with potential development partners and has already short-listed three interesting projects that AppIdea has decided to move ahead with, although he hopes more Danish ideas will come ticking in.

AppIdea – which aims to have a five-million strong user database by the end of 2015 – has created a special submitting form on appidea.com that they urge Danish developers and idea-makers to use to comprehensively convey their ideas ahead of the company's Copenhagen trip in January.

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