Serial investor Sequoia Capital has made a bet on expense management startup Yokoy. The venture capital firm led Yokoy’s $80 million Series B funding round that saw the participation of Left Lane and Balderton Capital. Following the financing round, Zurich, Switzerland-based Yokoy’s valuation has surpassed $500 million, reports say.
Yokoy was founded in 2019 and it sells its expense management software to majorly big businesses. Its clients include; train manufacturer Stadler and postal service DPD, and competes with other companies such as Coupa Software and SAP.
According to Philippe Sahli, Yokoy’s CEO and co-founder, “Most of our customers tend not to have an enterprise-level spend management solution.” With the new funding, the company will fuel its plans to expand in Europe, as well as hire more talents. The company also is looking at venturing into the US. “I think it makes total sense,” its CEO said.
Yokoy recently opened an office in Netherland and is looking at opening more in other countries. Yokoy’s use of artificial intelligence to automate spend management processes what was attracted the company to Sequoia, Matt Miller, a Sequoia partner in London revealed. “AI and automation have a meaningful role to play in refining this piece of the enterprise experience and can save companies a lot of money,” he said.
He went ahead to add that Switzerland is a mine when it comes to digital innovation. “We’ve found Switzerland to be an incredible place filled with incredible talent. Compared to five or six years ago, there’s a lot more entrepreneurial zeal developing,” he said.
Switzerland may as well be a mine for digital innovation but the country still has a long way to go as it has only produced five unicorns and compared to neighbouring countries such as Germany and France, the country is crawling while others are preparing to fly. The company, however, has huge potential and is gaining the attention of big players across the globe. Google, for instance, has a large engineering and development presence in the country.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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