Early-stage Fintech Kolleno has raised £4 million in seed funding, according to a statement by the company.
The funding was led by Eurazeo and Stride.VC. Other investors include Euler Hermes, HubSpot, and several angel investors including Michael Pennington, Mark Ransford, and Will Neale.
Kolleno was founded in 2020 by Dimitri Raziev, CEO – former at Goldman Sachs, and Ron Danenberg, CTO formerly at Expedia Group. Kolleno aims to simplify B2B credit control and collections for SMEs by automating the management of receivables on one single platform.
According to the company, the concept for Kolleno was due to the founders’ experience observing the impact that manual processes and poor cash flow management were having on SMEs. In less than 18 months of operation, Kolleno reports that it has already acquired customers across several markets in Europe, the UK, the US, Canada, and South Africa.
Kolleno facilitates cash reconciliation and provides tailored collection strategies by advising the most effective communication channels using AI and machine-learning technology. The platform has a Payment Portal, which is said to be accessible straight from the email or text received by the customer. The service allows businesses to get paid faster and reduce manual work and processes. Kolleno says it has already processed over 170,000 invoices across the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK, and Europe since it launched.
Raziev, Kolleno CEO, says that previously businesses had to hire credit specialists to manually monitor the payment dynamics of customers.
“An employee had to identify late payers, then prioritize, contact and follow up with individual clients to ensure late payments were received. This was not only time-consuming but also stressful for business owners and often prone to errors. Kolleno has been designed to alleviate these challenges by automating manual legacy processes to eliminate errors, ensure that businesses get paid faster and improve cash flows for our clients, some of whom have reported greater than 90% recovery using our platform.”
Kolleno’s software also offers added convenience by providing an Open API integration with ERP and software solutions, including Xero, QuickBooks, and Clio to better meet the needs of its clients.
“The technology has reached a level where it is able to remove repetitive tasks from employees and perform them faster and more accurately, freeing up time for staff to focus on higher value-added activities and speeding up the sales-to-cash timeframe. We are excited to build something that saves time and money for businesses,” said Danenberg, CTO.
Pietro Invernizzi from Stride.VC said Kolleno has demonstrated a focus on helping business owners manage their cash and recievables in contrast to the status quo of “working with clunky and expensive agencies who are misaligned with their clients.”