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Vertical marketplaces continue to be a key lynchpin in the digital economy, a centralized place where people providing certain goods or services can connect with those specifically looking to buy them, a position that has, it seems, become even more prominent and in-demand in our pandemic economy. In line with that trend, today a startup out of Denmark called Ageras Group, which has built a dual-purpose platform, providing both accountancy software and a marketplace for small and medium businesses to find accountants, is announcing a round of growth funding to expand its business.
The Copenhagen-based company has closed a round of $73 million from a single investor, Lugard Road Capital.
Ageras is not disclosing its valuation, but this report in Danish publication Borsen pegs it at 1.5 billion Danish Krone, or around $244 million at today’s rates. We’ve asked an Ageras spokesperson to confirm the figure and will update this post as we learn more.
We’re also asking how much it has raised in the past. Founded in 2012, the startup was bootstrapped for its first five years, and PitchBook discloses only around $220,000 before this round. Previous investors include Investcorp — which took a majority stake in the company in 2017 — and more recently Rabo Bank.
The new investment comes on the heels of good growth for the company, with plans to capitalize on that. Ageras has now passed 340,000 users across Denmark, the U.S., Sweden, Norway, Holland and Germany. It says that the plan will be to use the funding to expand into what it generally describes as “growth markets” — new countries, new customer segments, and also adding more services to its software stack — both through organic growth and acquisitions.
“Ageras has established a market leading and best-in-class product offering that is optimally positioned for international expansion and the rising demand for automated business tools,” said Rico Andersen, Ageras’ CEO who co-founded the company with Martin Hegelund, himself a serial investor who has backed the likes of Slack. “This latest financing round will support our ongoing commitment to scaling the Ageras brand and bringing our software offering to new customers across the globe. We look forward to continuing the Ageras story in the years to come.”
Ageras today follows a fairly typical labor marketplace model: SMEs seeking accountancy services submit their requirements in three areas — accounting, book keeping or auditing — and in return they receive three leads to contact. That model is one that Andersen and Hegelund know well, having previously built an online marketplace for home service professionals called “Fa det Gjort” (which translates to “Get it done!”).
Alongside this — and to further diversify the business model — the company has expanded into building accounting software, starting first with its own in-house Meneto suite, and then adding to it with two acquisitions, Billy in Denmark and Tellow in The Netherlands.
The investment underscores the persistent popularity of the marketplace model for online business, made popular in e-commerce by the likes of Amazon and Alibaba but extended to a range of services as well.
The labor marketplace model has been a perennial one in the world of startups — Uber helped pioneered it to connect those needing a ride with mobility options for getting somewhere, the likes of Deliveroo lets people sign up to deliver food and other goods to people, there are a number of platforms out there providing a way for tradespeople to connect with those needing a home or other job done, and so on.
And the evolution of that to expand to more knowledge worker jobs is not especially new, either. Upwork, Bark, Paro and others are among those offering a way for accountants to connect with would-be customers.
What is perhaps more notable is how the space seems to be growing right now: it pandemic has reduced a lot of foot traffic for business districts, changing what “offices” look like these days. That has opened the door to a wider range of people providing services to others, while at the same time possibly made it harder for them to be discoverable.
Marketplaces are one way to solve that challenge, and in that regard, it’s no surprise to see the reports that LinkedIn is eyeing up building its own marketplace for skilled workers.
That is not the only area where Ageras faces competition, though: in the area of online accounting services, meanwhile, there are a number of players including established companies like Intuit as well as newer entrants like Pennylane, TaxScouts, Zeitgold, and Stripe-backed Pilot.
Lugard appears to be a VC affiliated with U.S. hedge fund Luxor Capital Group and it has also backed the delivery platform Glovo, inRiver, and others. Investcorp, meanwhile, continues to hold a significant stake in the startup as part of its bigger tech investment strategy, which has included acquiring and then selling security firm Avira, and recently taking a stake in India’s logistics startup Xpressbees.
“The combination of Ageras’ mission critical software, backed by a reputation for dependability, insights into the professional service market, an outstanding management team, paired with its cutting-edge research & development has ensured it has continued to grow its market position and deliver an accountancy ecosystem based on high quality recurring revenue,” said Gilbert Kamieniecky, MD and head of Investcorp’s technology vertical, in a statement. “The additional financing secured by Ageras will help to drive international expansion and support the continued innovation of its customer offering.”
Despite the market impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, retail investing is increasing in Indonesia, especially among people aged 18 to 30. Today, investment platform FUNDtastic announced it has raised a $7.7 million Series A to tap into that demand, with plans to launch new products for retail investors, reports DealStreetAsia.
The round was led by Singapore-based Ascend Capital Group, with participation from other investors including tech holding company Indivara Group. FUNDtastic plans to add retail bonds, insurance and peer-to-peer lending to its current roster of mutual funds and gold investment options.
FUNDtastic acquired Invisee, a mutual funds and securities portal, last year for $6.5 million, allowing it to sell mutual fund products directly.
Based in Jakarta, FUNDtastic was founded in 2019 by Harry Hartono, Franky Chandra and Medwin Susilo. While capital investing in Indonesia remains relatively low, with many preferring to invest in real estate instead, that number is gradually increasing as young professionals diversify their holdings. The Indonesian Stock Exchange is also launching initiatives to attract more retail investors.
Other startups focused on making retail investment more accessible to Indonesians include Ajaib and Bibit, which both recently raised funding.
Indonesian investment platform Ajaib gets $25 million Series A led by Horizons Venture and Alpha JWC
Twitter recently held talks to acquire Indian social media startup ShareChat as the company explored ways to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market and build a global rival to TikTok, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
The American firm, which is already an investor in Bangalore-based ShareChat, offered to buy the Indian startup for $1.1 billion and had committed an additional investment of $900 million, two of the sources said.
The talks are no longer ongoing, two sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private. TechCrunch could not determine why the talks did not materialize into a deal.
Two sources said Twitter had expressed intention to take Moj, a short-form video app that ShareChat owns, to international markets and position it as a rival to Chinese app TikTok.
Twitter declined to comment and ShareChat did not respond to a request for comment.
India’s ban on TikTok last year prompted scores of local startups and international giants to try their hands at short-form video format.
Moj, with over 80 million users already, has emerged as one of the largest players in the category. Earlier this month, Snap inked a deal with ShareChat to integrate its Camera Kit into the Indian short video app. This is the first time Snap had formed a partnership of this kind with a firm in India.
With the buyout offer no longer being entertained, ShareChat has resumed talks with other investors for its new financing round. These investors include Google, Snap, as well as Tinder-parent firm Match Group, the sources said.
TechCrunch reported in January that the Indian startup was talking to Google and Snap as well as some existing investors including Twitter to raise over $200 million. A potential acquisition by Twitter prolonged the investment talks.
ShareChat, which claims to have over 160 million users, offers its social network app in 15 Indian languages and has a large following in small Indian cities and towns, or what venture capitalist Sajith Pai of Blume Ventures refer as “India 2.” Very few players in the Indian startup ecosystem have a reach to this segment of this population, which thanks to users from even smaller towns and villages — called “India 3” — getting online has expanded in recent years.
In an interview with TechCrunch last year, Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder and chief executive of ShareChat, said the startup’s marquee app was growing “exponentially” and that users were spending, on an average, more than 30 minutes a day on the service.
Twitter, itself, has struggled to make inroads outside of bigger cities and towns in India. Its app reached about 75 million users in the country in the month of January, according to mobile insight firm AppAnnie, data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch. It inked a deal with news and social app Dailyhunt to bring Moments — curated tweets pertaining to news and other local events — to the Google-backed Indian app.
The American social network has broadened its product offering in the past year amid pressure from activist investors to accelerate growth.
“Ten years in, TransferWise is now Wise,” screams the press release that landed in my in-box late last week. The fintech giant, most recently valued by private investors at $5 billion, is re-branding ahead of an expected IPO.
Of course, the company doesn’t actually make reference to a public listing — for regulatory reasons, it probably shouldn’t even if it wanted to — but the change of name will certainly make for a more streamlined ticker, while more broadly, the new moniker reflects how the decade-old company has long moved beyond B2C international money transfers alone to build what it now dubs a “cross-border payments network”.
“Originally launched in 2011 as a money transfer service for people, the company has expanded to build a cross-border payments network helping to make international banking cheaper, faster and more pleasant for its 10 million personal and business customers,” explains TransferWise.
The company has come far in tens years — you can view an early funding deck here — and today processes £4.5 billion in cross-border transactions every month, claiming to help customers save approximately £1 billion a year in reduced fees compared to using legacy banks.
More recently, having launched consumer and business products akin to a multi-currency bank account, including its own debit card, Wise has started to resemble a challenger bank, too, even if it has previously stated that there are no plans to apply for a full bank license.
Here’s how the company pitches the current product line:
Wise – building the world’s most international account. Send and spend money internationally, hold money in 55 currencies and get real account numbers in 10 currencies. Customers now hold over £3 billion in Wise, with 1.4 million debit cards issued.
Wise Business – the business account for going global, it has all the features of the personal account plus extras like bank feeds, mass payouts and multi-user access. Over 150,000 businesses joined Wise in the last 12 months
Wise Platform – the platform banks and companies like Monzo, GoCardless, and Xero use to tap into the Wise infrastructure, giving their customers cheaper, faster payments and international banking features. Wise Platform is live with banks in 10 countries across 4 continents.
Cue quote from Kristo Käärmann, CEO and co-founder, of Wise: “Today our name catches up with who we’re already building for – a community of people and businesses with multi-currency lives. That community now even includes the banks themselves. We’ve evolved to fix more than just money transfer, but the core experience of using Wise will remain faster, cheaper, and more convenient than anything else. Our mission remains the same. We’re still making — and always will be making — money work without borders.”
Customers can already opt into the new website at Wise.com. “The final switchover for all customers to the Wise brand will take place in March 2021,” says the company.
