In this edition of Localogy’s Local Radar, we examine newly funded companies Volta, Riverside & KPay
1. Volta
B2B sales enablement platform Volta has just raised a $6.3 million seed round. The company offers a SaaS product that it positions as the Shopify of B2B transaction enablement. The Shopify in that analogy is meant to convey that it’s democratized what was previously an expensive and skilled development endeavor to customize B2B transactional capability for a given business. The company also lists as its competition legacy approaches such as paper catalogs and manual order processing. Altogether, it’s meant to democratize product or parts ordering, fulfillment, and payments for SMBs everywhere. By modernizing sales for SMBs in this way, the company hopes to unlock many of the benefits of eCommerce such as better analytics and optimization for SMB sales operations. As a bonus, the SaaS platform lets businesses track and manage customers, giving it a built-in CRM function. As for its recent cash infusion, the company will use it to continue developing adjacent and complementary functions such as logistics, financing, and other things that go hand-in-hand with sales automation. Meanwhile, the funding round was led by Emblem, with participation from Robin Capital, Founders Future, Sequoia, and a16z.
2. Riverside
Among many of the marketing and creative functions that have been democratized in the creator economy by companies like Canva, multimedia production has seen its fair share of innovation. Podcasting in particular is red hot in today’s society, while a few platforms like Zencastr and Riverside have looked to democratize production in web-based tools. Riverside in fact just landed $30 million in Series C funding, bringing its lifetime total to $80 million. The company makes recording a podcast as easy as setting up a Zoom call. But it differentiates in recording quality from recorded Zoom calls – a common amateur approach to podcasting – by capturing local video and audio. In other words, Zoom records in the cloud and then lets you download the recording. Riverside flips that process by recording locally, then uploading to the cloud when done. The difference is much higher quality because the local microphone and camera feed are recorded, as opposed to a bandwidth-restricted and cloud-compressed recording that one usually gets from Zoom. In addition to that quality advantage, there are many features that lower friction, which is what non-savvy SMBs need these days. Riverside’s funding round was led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Seven Seven Six, and angel investor Sam Lessin. Riverside will apply the new cash to grow its team and its product development.
3. KPay
SMB financial management platform KPay has secured $55 million in a Series A round led by London-based investment firm Apis Partners. The company offers a platform that reduces friction in financial functions from accepting payments, payroll, bill settlement, and remittance. In the three years since it launched, KPay already serves 45,000 merchants in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan, and reached a head count of 440. It also partners with more than 150 banks and financial service firms to expand its functionality. And its revenue has grown at a 166% compound annual growth rate since its founding. So what will it do with the funding? The company plans to put it towards product development and expanding its geographic footprint. It also wants to accelerate its competency when it comes to the ways that AI can integrate into its platform and boost its efficacy and operational efficiency.
Header Image Credit: Matt Botsford on Unsplash
