Change Ventures invested in London-based adtech with Estonian entrepreneur Drovo

Estonian Change Ventures invested in London-based adtech Drovo. The £3M round was led by venture capital trust Maven Capital Partners.

London-based investment management company Caygan Capital, UK funding and investment group Venturian and private investor network Growthdeck, and some business angels, including family office investor from the UK Dan Heron and Rob Atkinson were also among the startup's backers.

Founded in London in 2015 by Estonian entrepreneur Artjom Jekimtsev, Drovo is a platform that connects vehicle owners with advertisers to promote products and run digital engagement campaigns. The service allows owners of taxis, commercial fleet vehicles, and private cars to earn a passive income by placing advertisements on their vehicles. 

Drovo usually mounts dynamic digital screens on the roofs of the cars. The extra feature of the digital screen is that it can collect a lot of data on road and air quality. The company plans to provide this data to local governments, NGOs, and other institutions so that they can use it for the benefit of local communities.

The advertisers receive from Drovo a dashboard where they can see the location of the vehicles, the distance traveled and the routes taken. There is also data about impressions, reach, and overall advertisement campaign success. Drovo encourages drivers to use electric vehicles (EVs) by paying them more than fossil fuel vehicle drivers. 

The startup will use the investment to scale on the market, hire more staff, purchase hardware, and enhance the dynamic digital rooftop screens.

Established in Tallinn in 2017 by Andris Berzins, Rait Ojasaar, and Yrjö Ojasaar, Change Ventures backs pre-seed and seed-stage Baltic startups and founders with Baltic origin. Change Ventures has invested in over 30 startups. In May 2023, it launched a €20M Fund III to double down on pre-seed investing. The initial ticket size per startup is between €100K and €500K. The firm has recently invested in the Estonian risk management platform Complok, a code-free platform for building business applications Formaloo, car subscription company Planet42, the Latvian ad tech startup Monetizr, and SaaS startup Trace.Space, Aerones, and the Spanish data analytics solution for consumer goods vertical Algori.