Cloud subscription consolidation platform Cledara lands $3.4m
Cledara, a UK fintech start-up which claims to bring order to “cloud chaos”, has landed $3.4 million in funding.
Led by London’s Nauta Capital, the round also saw participation from BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership – the co-investment firm operated by Spanish bank BBVA and venture investment platform Anthemis.
Co-founder Cristina Vila saw a need to help companies manage their SaaS usage and spending
For investor BBVA, this capital injection marks a step in the bank’s plans to develop a start-up studio in London.
Growth in 2020
Cledara now has 150 clients. These include Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider Railsbank, as well as aggregator Plaid.
Without quoting exact numbers, Cledera says it’s grown revenues 20x this year. The fintech centralises payments to different cloud software providers, giving firms a clearer view of their subscriptions.
Cledara partners with PayrNet, its electronic money distributor, under an electronic money institution (EMI) licence.
Its virtual debit Mastercard, which allows customers’ employees to purchase Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions independently, is issued by Cornercard UK.
“Most of Cledara’s initial clients came from organic growth, without having to invest in marketing,” says Christhi Theiss, BBVA & Anthemis’ Venture Partnership’s head.
Evolution of Cledara
Founded in 2018, Dopay’s former head of business operations, Cristina Vila saw a need to help companies manage their SaaS usage and spending.
Fellow co-founder is Brad van Leeuwen, a former executive at Cledara’s customer Railsbank.
Whilst one revenue stream for Cledara comes from interchange fees via debit card spend, the other is a paid subscription model for its consolidation solution.
These products are available in more 20 countries across Europe. The fresh capital will go towards product growth and further international expansion. The eventual plan is to enter the US market.
“The continued acceleration of growth means we really need to grow the team. We’ve had to slow down customer onboarding in the past month because of bottlenecks,” says van Leeuwen.
“We will be growing the team 4x before mid next year across all parts of the business — support, success, product, engineering, compliance, marketing and sales. This round brings us the funding to do that, and more”.
The majority of new-hires will work in Barcelona, where it opened a new officer some four months ago in a bid to curb caps on access to European talent as a result of Brexit.
