Smarp Rounds up €225k in Seed Round

Helsinki based startup, Smarp, is on the rise. With major client companies in Finland and the UK, Smarp’s social business tools and services, and especially their SmarpShare – Service, have been in high demand.

It’s a sweet idea actually. According to their researches, more than half of employees feel like they could publish company related content into their personal social media, such as LinkendIn, if only they were encouraged to do so from the highs of the chain-of-command. That’s where Smarp steps in, in the form of a game of some sort.

The more your employee includes your company in their own social media, the more points they will get. And lots of points means you’re a good employee and good employees are eligible for a prize. Apparently the prize depends a lot on the enterprise in question, so it’s hard to know what exactly it might be, but big companies such as Metso, Caverion and DreamBroker have reported very good results. So there is no doubt the activity has put the company employees on the move, all in good spirit.

The business model has spread into the UK  and established a steady foothold in the Nordic markets already, so now Smarp is gazing away from Europe, towards Asia.

Just yesterday, Smarp announced the closing of a €225 000 investment round. Smarp’s CEO Roope Heinilä, believes the investment round and the people behind it will greatly improve and accelerate Smarp’s international success.

The funds will be used to further develop their SmarpShare service and to set foothold into the Middle-Eastern and Asian markets of Dubai and Singapore.

“Having successful entrepreneurs such as Pekka Koskinen (founder of Snoobi) and Joose Viljanen (co-founder of Appelsiini), as well as the international experience of Frontier backing us will surely help in expanding our international operations quickly. We are expecting fast growth from the Singapore and Dubai markets as both of them have a high professional social media penetration. In addition, we are glad to have the experience of our Chairman, Mr. Pedro Ros, who previously served as the global CEO of TNS and joined Smarp last December, to help guide our expansion.”

Frontier’s large seed investment might not come as a surprise, as the company specializes in facilitating business transition into the Middle-East and Southeast Asia. Frontier’s Country Manager and Shareholder Lasse Lehtinen says the collaboration between the two companies has brought good results.

“The past few weeks we have worked closely with Smarp in order to prepare and develop their sales processes to meet the requirements of rapid and scalable international expansion. The progress has been very good and we are now ready to start the internationalization projects in Dubai and Singapore”, says Lehtinen.

Boredom will not be on Smarp’s schedule anytime soon. Following the core rules of business expansion, their target markets in the East will certainly be challenging to conquer, but with very lucrative results, if successful.