KAYA VC Raises €70M to Expand Startup Investments Across CEE
Category: Venture Capital, CEE Tags: venture capital, CEE startups, early-stage funding
Backers of Docplanner and Booksy, KAYA VC Raises €70 Million for Fifth Fund to Target Early-Stage Startups Across Central and Eastern Europe
KAYA VC, the Prague-headquartered venture capital firm known for early investments in Docplanner and Booksy, has announced the successful close of a €70 million fund—its fifth to date. With a sharpened pan-regional focus, KAYA aims to fund up to 25 early-stage startups across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), expanding beyond its core markets of Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia to include Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Slovenia.
Subscribe to Startup Digest to stay ahead with the latest news, investments, and must-attend events.
The fund will target investments ranging from €1M to €3M at the pre-seed to Series A stages, while reserving the ability to commit up to €20M in follow-on rounds through co-investments with institutional partners. This move reinforces KAYA’s strategy of identifying high-potential founders early and supporting them throughout their scaling journey.
“We believe founders from the CEE region are building with a global mindset from day one,” said Tomas Obrtac, Managing Partner at KAYA VC. “This fund allows us to back more of these ambitious entrepreneurs across a broader geographic footprint.”
Unlike vertical-focused funds, KAYA VC remains sector-agnostic, with particular interest in emerging frontiers such as biotech, next-generation materials, and healthcare innovation. The firm’s London-based partner Martin Rajcan emphasized their commitment to backing founders from the region regardless of where they currently reside, aligning with the trend of increasingly distributed entrepreneurial talent across Europe.
KAYA’s existing portfolio includes several regional standouts, including:
Docplanner, Poland’s healthtech platform used by millions globally.
Booksy, a scheduling platform for the beauty industry, now nearing unicorn status.
Rohlik Group, the Czech online grocery delivery startup already valued at over $1 billion.
Beyond capital, KAYA positions itself as a strategic and operational partner, offering portfolio companies:
Access to a curated network of experts, including the founders of Rohlik and Better Stack, and even researchers from Meta’s Llama 3 AI team.
Direct intros to global VCs such as Index Ventures, Creandum, EQT, and Goldman Sachs.
Support in later fundraising rounds and scaling internationally.
In line with this expansion, Karel Zheng—a former founder turned investor—has been promoted to General Partner, underscoring the firm’s founder-first ethos.
With this new fund, KAYA VC reinforces its role as one of the most active and founder-friendly investors in the CEE startup landscape, and continues to shape the region’s emergence as a global tech hub.
