Romanian learning platform for teams working remotely draws 200K euro investment

The Romanian developer of the learning platform for teams working remotely, Houston, drew an investment of 200K euro from a women-only group of "business angels" from Eastern and Central Europe, as well as from an investment fund in Latvia, the company announced in a release sent, on Wednesday.

"The investment drawn helps us move forward the plan to offer companies an instrument by which they can support their virtual teams in their learning, in coming up with better ideas, making wiser decisions and executing tasks more efficiently. The fact that nearly half the beta clients became our investors confirms the utility of our product. With the drawing of this investment of 200,000 euro, we also announce the exiting of our product from beta version," states Robert Blaga, founder and CEO of Houston.

The investment was drawn from Lumus - a group of business angels formed only of women from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as from Overkill - an investment fund in Latvia and four of Houston's beta clients. The four beta clients invested 100,000 euro and they are: Bitou (Germany), DynamicEvents (Ireland), Right Impact (Singapore) and Turnaround (United Arab Emirates), according to Agerpres.

Presently, Houston has beta clients from Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates.

The management of the Romanian developer has planned to obtain financing between 350,000 and 500,000 euro this summer.

Among the platforms that tested the Houston platform are: Deloitte, Continental Automotive, Pfizer, Microsoft, Salesforce and Sony. Since the beginning of this year, the degree of use of the platform rose, on average, by 56 pct each month, and the number of employees using the platform increased from 300, in January, to 1,700, in April.

Representatives of the company estimate, for the end of 2021, a portfolio of 100 clients, as well as expanding the activity in France, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the United States.

Houston is the developer of a learning platform that has at its base an algorithm to measure the way in which employee behavior changes once they accumulate new knowledge.

The company, launched in March 2020 by Robert Blaga, a specialist with over 10 years experience in training, targets the human resources departments of large companies and providers of training and development programs. Presently, the platform can be used by between five hundred and one thousand persons simultaneously, but the plan is to increase capacity to 5,000 persons until July of this year.