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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.”
Gophr, a U.K.-based last-mile delivery provider, has raised £4 million in funding, as it looks to invest in its product off the back of 300% revenue growth during the last 12 months.
Leading the round is pan-European B2B investor Nauta Capital. The company had previously raised £1 million in two rounds, including £500,000 from publicly-listed Auctus Alternative Investments.
Noteworthy, Gophr’s co-founder and CEO, Seb Robert, tells me the 2015-founded company reached monthly net profitability around 3 years ago and was net profitable for the whole of last year. Like other delivery companies, Gophr has benefited from a pandemic bump, but fortitude aside, is aiming to step on the gas.
Gophr says it has completed over 2 million same-day deliveries to-date. Customers include leading consumer brands including HelloFresh, Boots, Co-Op and Selfridges. It claims 5,000 clients in total and operates in most U.K. cities.
On being net profitable and in relation to raising new funding, Robert says he felt it was an important proof point to hit, recalling how, just a few years ago, bar a couple of huge successes, we saw “a generation of delivery startups go up in flames along with their investors cash”. They included Jinn and Valk Fleet, to name just two.
“It was all very predictable to anyone who’d done their homework up front (I remember at the time DM’ing you specifically and naming the ones I thought would no longer be around in a year or two!) and as a result figured that a model that proved it could actually make money would have a better chance to raise going forward,” he says.
Furthermore, Robert notes that we are starting to see a renaissance in VC investment in the last-mile delivery space, but argues that, on the surface at least, these newer delivery startups are taking a similar approach to the previous generation.
“Getting a toothbrush to you in 15 minutes is great. But what do you do with the courier who’s now coming back empty handed? That takes time and it costs money. Only time will tell,” he says.
Though Robert doesn’t say it, that’s likely taking a swipe at a new crop of startups either following the Instacart model, such as Getir in Turkey, or the plethora of delivery-only ‘dark stores’, including Berlin’s much-hyped Gorillas, France’s Cajoo,, and U.K.’s Dija, Zapp, Weezy, and Fancy (currently in talks to be acquired by U.S.-based goPuff).
With all the hype around drones and autonomous vehicles, Robert says that people forget or don’t understand that the delivery business, particularly last-mile, is still a people business. This means building a service that works for the couriers that power it.
“Same day at scale is hard, so most players cut corners,” he says. “Legacy companies can deliver at scale, but the sophistication of the service is poor, and then only make money because they squeeze their couriers. Tech startups have great app experiences and big brand budgets, but they don’t know how to deliver sustainably so they burn through VC cash waiting for robots, drones, autonomous vehicles and bionic duckweed to shore up the bottom line”.
“The way we’ve managed to strip out the compromise is by creating a platform that maximises each individual courier’s ability to make money, in whatever direction they’re traveling in, whilst making sure the end customer gets their stuff on time with no issues”.
Gophr has also built a platform that Robert claims helps couriers “level up”. This required properly understanding the “complexity and variability of the delivery process,” including how individual couriers want to work, and how to best meet customer expectations, which varies per sector.
“I think with most delivery apps and at incumbent carriers the courier is kind of incidental, and seen as replaceable; we try to focus on how we can make them better, and we’re still working on it,” he says. “Being a great courier doesn’t just boil down to being on time — that’s the basics — it’s what works for different types of customer needs and expectations. You might get couriers who aren’t great at multi-drop but very good on the circuit, or that need to work on job management but more than make up for it through excellent communication. Sending or receiving a package is a bit of an emotional purchase when you think about it so we have to do our best to manage that in the best way possible. Having happy couriers is a good start”.
Meanwhile, Robert is not phased by last week’s Uber ruling that saw U.K. courts reclassify the worker status gig economy-style drivers, meaning that they are entitled to additional benefits and worker protections.
“I think it’s great news for shutting down bogus self-employment,” he says. “I don’t see how the incumbent U.K. delivery industry can continue to operate under anything else other than this new worker classification. If operators want to stay on the right side of the law, worker status is the one that’s closest to how they currently do business. In the short term they might be able to mitigate the impact through recent 3rd party solutions that have sprung up that provide cover for the new IR35 rules coming into effect later this year, but I can’t imagine that will last forever.
“Fundamentally, we’ve always considered the courier as ‘the talent’ and not a cost centre or a commodity, and that the important relationship to build is between the courier and client, with our platform as an enabler, not a gatekeeper. And that’s always been key to how we operate”.
This means that Gophr doesn’t penalise or sin-bin drivers for non-acceptance of work. Its app show the driver where they would be picking up and delivering to, what the consignment is and what they’ll get paid so they have all the relevant info before they accept a job”.
However, he says the rate setting aspect of the Uber case is interesting, because centrally imposed rates can actually work in favour of couriers as apposed to an entirely free-market. “We do set the rates they’re paid, but that’s because we looked at other solutions that enabled couriers to set their own price per mile and/or got them to bid for work and all it did was encourage a race to the bottom,” Robert says. “So it’s kind of ironic that that was one of the key parts of the ruling. This could become (quite literally) a law of unintended consequences”.
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.
