Kolleno, a London-based FinTech start-up specialising in accounts receivable management for SMEs, has attracted £4 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Eurazeo and Stride.VC, with participation from Euler Hermes, HubSpot and several angel investors including Michael Pennington, Mark Ransford and Will Neale.
Founded in 2020 by CEO Dimitri Raziev, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Fasanara Capital, and CTO Ron Danenberg, ex-Expedia Group and Vatglobal, Kolleno aims to simplify B2B credit control and collections for SMEs by automating the management of receivables on one single platform.
The idea to form Kolleno was born from their experience observing the impact that manual processes and poor cash flow management were having on SMEs. In less than 18 months of operation, the startup has already acquired customers across several markets in Europe, the UK, the US, Canada and South Africa.
Kolleno has already processed over 170,000 invoices across the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Europe since it launched.
The platform does cash reconciliation, prioritises the workflow and provides tailored collection strategies by advising the most effective communication channels using AI and machine-learning technology.
The customers are approached via omnichannel, in-app communication methods including email, SMS and call.
The platform also has a payment portal which is accessible straight from the email or text received by the customer. Its dashboard provides data insights and credit analysis helping to mitigate risks and reduce the number of bad debts.
“Previously, businesses had to hire credit control specialists or give extra tasks to existing members of their team to manually monitor the payment dynamics of customers,” said Raziev.
“An employee had to identify late payers, then prioritise, 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.”
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The software is equipped with machine-learning technology capable of automating and optimising the timing, method and delivery of client communications, and offers a variety of efficiency-improving features, such as an actions board and payments portal to simplify follow-up and receipt of payments.
“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,” added Danenberg