Ex-Dáme jídlo boss raises 656 million crowns for startups

The former head of the food-delivery service Dáme jídlo (later renamed Foodora), Filip Fingl, has launched a venture fund, IP Lab Ventures Fund, which has secured 656 million crowns from the European Investment Fund (EIF) with support from the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade. In total, the fund expects to raise 1.2 billion crowns, with the rest of the capital to come from private investors.

For nearly three years now, Fingl and his colleagues have been running IP Lab, a project that helps promising technologies from universities and research institutes find their way into business. According to the ministry, the new fund is the first of its kind in Czechia and is meant to connect local research with the capital and expertise needed to build globally competitive companies.

IP Lab Ventures Fund plans to support projects and spin-offs emerging from Czech universities and research organisations, focusing above all on artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, robotics, smart mobility, biotechnology, cybersecurity, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing. Over the coming years, the fund intends to finance forty projects, mostly in Czechia but partly in other Central and Eastern European countries as well.

“The partners at IP Lab Ventures have been working together since 2023 and over three years have helped seven technology projects through commercialisation and the creation of spin-offs. We believe they’ll be able to turn other good ideas into successful companies too,” said Marek Mora, vice-president of the European Investment Bank. Fingl himself adds that Czechia has excellent universities, talented people and technologies capable of competing globally, and that the fund wants to be their partner precisely where capital and commercialisation experience are lacking. IP Lab Ventures is the second venture fund financed under the National Recovery Plan together with the EIF, after Tensor Ventures.