Image credits: Closure
Closure, a Rotterdam-based contract cancellation service, announced on Tuesday that it has raised €1.5M in funding from Borski Fund and Rabobank. Early investors, including Kees Jan Rietveld, Lex Geerdes, and Wiegertje Groenveld also participated in the round.
The Dutch scaleup says it will use the funds to support the team’s expansion and roll out to other European countries.
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The announcement comes four years after the company raised €300K in a Seed round of funding in November 2018.
Closure: What you need to know
Founded by Chantal van der Velde and Graciëlla van Hamersveld, Closure offers users a digital platform that allows heirs to cancel all their subscriptions, from telephone to social media accounts, in one place. The platform also allows users to transfer them to a different user.
Closure co-founder and CEO Graciëlla van Vliet says, “Our goal is to support heirs by handling the digital legacy of a loved one. This way, families can focus on what is most important at this moment in life: mourning.”
The company says that a deceased person typically has more than 30 accounts, subscriptions, and contracts, varying from bank accounts and insurances to charity donations and social media accounts.
The Dutch platform unburdens the heirs of the deceased by acting as a single point of contact between them and the organisations. Heirs indicate the companies with which subscriptions should be terminated or taken over, and Closure carries out these requests.
The heir can access the progress through a weekly update and a personal dashboard.
Closure CTO Bart Verhaegh says, “By applying numerous machine learning technologies, a single employee can now handle hundreds of requests a day. We not only unburden heirs but also help organisations process a death notification in a care-free and less laborious manner, as typically customer service desks do not grow proportional to the company’s customer base.”
The Rotterdam company collaborates with more than 200 funeral homes and numerous service organisations such as T-Mobile, Unicef, Interpolis, OV-Chipkaart, and Knab.
Closure is licensed by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) to terminate or transfer contracts of financial institutions.
‘We commit ourselves to innovations that stimulate people’s financial well-being. Due to the innovative strength and mission-driven approach of the team, we now also support the next growth steps. We see opportunities for Closure to increase their impact in both the Netherlands and abroad,” says Thijs Reiling, investment banker, startups and scaleups at Rabobank.
“Behind the Closure software is a revolutionary innovation that could also be applicable outside the death process. At Borski Fund, we invest in AI solutions because they offer enormous opportunities to efficiently solve quantitatively large social problems. Closure is the fifth AI company to add to our portfolio.” said Bertrand van Leersum, Investment Director at Borski Fund.
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