France SME Banking Startup Qonto announced today it has raised €486 million in Series D funding, bringing Qonto’s valuation to €4.4 billion.
This amount is unprecedented in the French tech ecosystem and is one of the largest funding rounds ever recorded in French history. This latest round is jointly led by new investors Tiger Global and TCV, in addition to eight other new contributors: Alkeon, Eurazeo, KKR, Insight Partners, Exor Seeds, Guillaume Pousaz, Gaingels and Ashley Flucas. They will join current investors Valar, Alven, DST Global and Tencent who are all renewing their support by participating in this new funding round.
Since its launch in France in 2017, Qonto has been committed to building the first all-in-one finance solution for SMEs and freelancers. Qonto simplifies everything from everyday banking and financing to bookkeeping and spend management, allowing its customers to focus on what truly matters. The company currently has more than 220,000 clients across four markets (France, Germany, Italy, and Spain). With this new funding round, Qonto’s ambition is to become the finance solution of choice for 1 million European SMEs and freelancers by 2025.
To support its high-level goals, Qonto will:
- Continue expanding its product offer through in-house development, new strategic partnerships and potential acquisitions to ensure it offers its clients the best product available on the market;
- Further grow its market penetration across Germany, Italy and Spain and new markets. In 2021, the company opened local offices in Barcelona, Berlin and Milan to fully tailor its offer to each market and lay down roots in those local ecosystems to foster closer partnership. Qonto is expanding particularly rapidly across these markets: the company has quadrupled its revenue over the past two years. Qonto will further accelerate its strong momentum across Europe by investing over €100 million in each market (Germany, Italy and Spain) over the next two years. Qonto also plans to reinforce its European leadership by launching in new markets by 2023. In 2025, it is expected that 75% of new clients will come from outside France.
- Recruit new talent and quadruple its team to more than 2,000 by 2025, 50% of new hires to be based outside of France. In part, this will be achieved thanks to the creation of a new Customer Support Operations Hub, to be based in Barcelona and designed to maintain its outstanding customer support while further scaling. To reinforce its international recruitment strategy and meet the expectations of an increasingly agile and mobile talent pool, the company will also launch a European “Qonto Campus” program to enable international mobility between the local offices.
Alexandre Prot
Alexandre Prot, co-founder and CEO of Qonto:
“Since our launch in 2017, we’ve constantly strived to create the finance solution that energizes SMEs and freelancers, empowering them to achieve more. This new Series D funding round is an amazing opportunity for us to accelerate our hyper-growth trajectory by investing in our product, our customer service and our power to attract new talents. This funding round reveals the incredible dynamism of the French and European Tech ecosystem. We count on policymakers to continue their efforts to ensure entrepreneurship can succeed, leading to European and global champions that deliver innovation. This is only the beginning of our journey to best serve SMEs and freelancers and we couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds for us and our ambitions. The Qonto team is honored to welcome the most prestigious international investors to support our mission to become the leading business finance solution.”
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Featured image credit: Alexandre Prot (CEO) and Steve Anavi (President)
The post Record-Fundraising in France: €486 Million for SME Banking Startup Qonto in Series D appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News - FintechNewsCH.
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