Bokio, the free automated accounting company, announced today a €3.1 million (30 000 000 SEK) in Series Seed funding led by Creandum with participation from Svea Ekonomi, Inbox Ventures and angel investors Sophia Bendz & Mattias Miksche as well as existing investors Chalmers Ventures. The funds will be used to hire key talent, invest in product, and expand internationally.
Automating Accounting
Gothenburg-based Bokio is working with thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses and has shaken the accounting industry by offering accounting services to Swedish businesses for free. Accounting often requires repetitive tasks, that drives many of us crazy during every reporting period. Bokio’s offers a powerful machine learning technology that automates bookkeeping faster, cheaper, and easier than traditional accountants, bookkeeping software, or finance departments.
For business owners, Bokio acts as a business controller in a pocket – a handy mobile-first tool that answers your big accounting questions, while tackling receipts, invoicing, and payroll with ease.
Bokio claims that its core bookkeeping tools will always remain free, with value-added services like priority support and dedicated human accountants are available at a fraction of the cost of traditional bookkeeping solutions.
Soon, Bokio will additionally help companies leverage their data to offer financial products tailored individually to each company, including utilities, insurances, and credit services, which are extremely difficult for small businesses to gain access to due to a lack of data.
Viktor Stensson, CEO of Bokio comments: “We’re building the platform and basic infrastructure for the economic landscape of the 21st century. Entrepreneurship and SMEs are the future and we will be the natural partner to help in this transformation process and put the entrepreneur back in charge. Bokio and entrepreneurship will be as natural as Google and search, we solve the problems and help to anticipate future needs.
Strong organic traction driving the Series Seed
Since launching in late 2015, Bokio has seen strong organic growth, powering over 19,000 Swedish businesses without any marketing spending, and is currently growing rapidly with 50-100 new companies onboarding each day. Small businesses make up over 96% of all businesses globally, and bookkeeping is a €6 Billion dollar industry in Sweden alone.
Creandum Venture Capital believes that bookkeeping should not only be automatic but it should also be free. With that in mind the company is backing Bokio’s €3.1 million Seed round. Creandum previously invested in companies like iZettle, Pleo, Klarna, Xeneta, Kahoot! and Spotify. Johan Benner, General Partner at Creandum comments:
“Bokio is making bookkeeping much more than just the process of recording and reporting transactions. It’s becoming an invaluable tool for business owners to make better decisions on the go, and companies are creating new opportunities from their data.”
