Besides several international angel investors, PortfoLion and Oktogon Ventures have participated in a €1.5 million seed capital round for Deligo Vision Technologies, a developer of automated checkout services for workplace restaurants, the company announced. Active primarily in France and the UK, Deligo is looking to further develop its service and strengthen its presence in Western European markets and increase its customer base over the next year.

According to the latest research, the experience at the checkout and the queue leading up to it is one of the strongest influencing factors when customers choose a location for buying groceries or going to a canteen from work. To create the most seamless experience possible, more and more international chains are starting to test cashierless stores as an innovative solution, but there is one area where automated payment solutions are already being adopted much more widely. Deligo, founded by Hungarian brother duo Balázs and István Haidekker and Gábor Fazekas, aims to automate the checkout process in workplace canteens. While there are only a few dozen cashierless shops worldwide, in Western Europe, Deligo's main market, there are currently hundreds of canteens using automated payment and the number is growing rapidly.

The Haidekker brothers, who made their first success building a carpooling company, AutoHop, started developing the image recognition system behind Deligo in 2019 with their own resources. They used the experience from their first tests to create and launch their product in Western European markets. Deligo's innovation is now serving canteens in dozens of locations in France, Switzerland and the UK. The method is based on a machine-learning software solution that can recognise dishes that are often served differently from the menu and, together with the associated payment system, can process and shorten payment to 3 seconds without human intervention. The system has significant added value not only in staff shortage environments, but also in self-service restaurants with a high turnover or even a small number of customers.

After developing the product and finding a market entry, the founders decided to raise capital in order to expand faster. "We wanted to have a presence in multiple locations in our target market with an easy-to-use system that provides a seamless payment experience before we embark on a more intensive growth trajectory. Fortunately, with the results we've achieved so far, we've convinced angels and financial investors such as Charlie Songhurst, Jared Schrieber, Robin Chase and Márton Szőke, PortfoLion and Oktogon Ventures," explains István Haidekker, co-founder and CEO of Deligo.

The €1.5 million seed investment round was led by PortfoLion, part of the OTP Group, but also includes Oktogon Ventures, led by Gyula Fehér and Veronika Pistyur, angel investors such as Tresorit and Bitrise angel investor Márton Szőke, Jared Schrieber and Charlie Songhurst, who has a portfolio of over 500 companies. "The founders and I have known each other since Autohop and have followed their vision and challenges for Deligo from the beginning. I was very impressed that the user experience was the primary focus in the product development, they dared to simplify compared to the competition, which the market appreciates based on the experience so far", said Aurél Pásztor, Partner at PortfoLion, highlighting the factors that attracted investors.

"I see a lot of untapped potential in hospitality and retail automation. For the challenges of such a rapidly expanding market, Deligo brings a scalable solution at the right time, elegantly hiding the complexity of the underlying technology," added Jared Schrieber, Deligo's US angel investor, who previously led his business to unicorn status in the US. The capital raised will be used to attract the necessary expertise to further develop the product and build a stronger presence in Europe.