CEO and co-founder of Billogram, Jonas Suijkerbuijk | Image credit: Billogram
Stockholm-based Billogram (formerly Atlas Invoice), an invoicing and payments platform that automates customer management, prevents churn and increases revenue, announced that it has raised €15M in a fresh round of funding.
Prior to this, in September 2021, the company raised $45M (then, approximately €38.16M) in a funding round to expand its services in six new markets – Norway, Finland, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy – while also further expanding in Germany.
According to a statement, over the past two years, Billogram has witnessed record growth in the Swedish market and expanded into several European markets. The Swiss market is particularly intriguing for Billogram because of the huge amount of invoice transactions and the fact that more invoices are sent, processed, and settled there than nearly anywhere else. This increases the impact of invoice digitisation.
Helping companies offer their customers a better payment experience
Founded in 2011 by Cesar Sangchi and Jonas Suijkerbuijk, Billogram provides a SaaS solution for invoice distribution, payments, and reconciliation to make it easier for businesses to keep track of incoming cash flow.
Billogram first marketed to small companies and claims that it was the first company in Sweden to effectively digitise paper invoices. The product has developed over time from a digital invoicing service to a customer relationship-enhancing software platform that ensures on-time payments, boosts customer happiness, and reduces churn.
Billogram CRO, Carl Lindberg says, “Demand for our product is larger than ever, and as we move into the vast international market, our success will come down to proper execution. Billogram’s experience gives us an advantageous position, as our technology has been developed and optimised for over ten years, and we started investing in the organisation’s growth a few years ago. It’s now a matter of growing further and faster, and scaling the company based on a well-functioning model.”
Investors in this round
The investment was led by Swisscom Ventures (which invested €10M) to further boost the company’s growth initiatives in Europe, and the DACH region specifically. Existing investors including Partech, CNI Nordic and Inbox Capital, also participated in this round.
Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading telecoms company and one of its leading IT companies, is headquartered in Ittigen, close to the capital city Berne. Outside Switzerland, Swisscom has a presence on the Italian market in the guise of Fastweb. In the first half of 2022 around 19,000 employees generated sales of CHF 5,494M (approximately €5.6M). The company is 51 per cent Confederation-owned and is one of Switzerland’s “most” sustainable and innovative companies.
Swisscom Ventures is the venture capital arm of the Swisscom Group with over $650M assets under management and advisory. Since 2007, Swisscom Ventures invested in over 80 technology companies from offices in Switzerland (Zurich, Bern, Lausanne) and the US (Silicon Valley).
Co-founder and CEO of Billogram, Jonas Suijkerbuijk, says, “The fact that one of Europe’s largest telecom companies sees the potential in our business, and the value our platform creates is important evidence of our fit for international markets. Recently, our core offering – creating long-term, loyal and profitable relationships with end-customers – has become more important than ever. That large European players now see how it provides direct cost savings, increased revenue and higher profit per end-customer is fantastic.”
Partech, which was born in San Francisco and Paris, claims to be one of the most active tech investors in the world, bringing together capital, operational experience, and strategic support for entrepreneurs at Seed, venture and growth stages. Its current portfolio is made up of 200+ companies in more than 30 countries, of which 16 are valued at more than $1B. These include Alan, Jellysmack, ManoMano, Merama, People.ai, Rohlik, SellerX, Sorare, Toss, Wave, Xendit, and Zepz.
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