Ageras Group raises €60M to fuel international growth

Ageras Group (“Ageras”), in which Rabo Frontier Ventures (“RFV”) in 2020 acquired a minority stake, raises €60M from New York-based technology fund Lugard Road Capital. The capital injection will accelerate the international growth and enable additional acquisitions.

The B2B technology company Ageras has with record-breaking speed secured a great foothold in Europe and recently also expanded to the US. Since 2012, the company has successfully matched small and medium sized businesses with accountants and has since then expanded its offering to also include accounting software.

 

Ageras has since its inception in 2012 delivered impressive results. The company, which offers its services through a traditional SaaS model, is active across six countries in Europe (the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordics) and the US. Last year the company doubled the amount of employees as a result of the rapid growth.

Strong focus on Netherlands as a core market

Ageras is very active in the Netherlands with its professional services marketplace (nl.ageras.com) and the cloud-based accounting software for microbusinesses, Tellow. Ageras acquired Tellow from RFV in 2020, and as part of the transaction, RFV invested into the combined group, which now counts Ageras.com, Meneto (digital accounting solution), Billy (cloud-based accounting software) and Tellow.

 

“Our vision is to make life easier for small businesses. We do that by starting with the basics, their accounting, but on a longer term also offering banking services, which is why we saw such a strong fit with having Rabobank joining as an investor. We are building an ecosystem of financial products and services around the company, which is the journey that Rabobank bought into and now also Lugard Road Capital”, says co-founder and Group CEO Rico Andersen.

 

“Ageras already makes doing business easier for small business owners and is well on its way to supporting the full customer journey. With this round Ageras will continue to expand its product lines and B2B platform to further build out their ecosystem”, says managing partner RFV Jeroen van Doornik.

A B2B platform centered around financial services

To better support the full customer journey, Ageras has established new businesses or acquired competing or complementary companies. The Group, which started with the B2B online marketplace Ageras.com, is therefore now a family of product lines, each centered around helping small business owners succeed in all financial aspects. Therefore, Ageras is also working on building financial services directly into the existing product line.

 

“We believe in a future with one-stop solutions. Therefore, just like we have done in the past, we will use this investment to continue building and acquiring companies, each contributing to our vision of making life easier for small business owners by making administration easier”, says co-founder and Group CMO Martin Hegelund.

 

Ageras integrates their companies both from a technology, culture and customer perspective so the synergies become an advantage for both Ageras and their customers.

 

”It is an increasingly more complicated task, especially for smaller businesses, to keep track of bookkeeping, finances and the numerous reporting deadlines they face during a year. Therefore, they need user-friendly and innovative solutions that can reduce time spend on admin, so they can focus on what is most important – growing and developing their business instead of just maintaining it”, adds Rico Andersen.”

Fakta

  • Ageras Group was founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneurs Rico Andersen and Martin Hegelund, who between them have 25 years of experience in building internet companies. Before
  • Ageras, the pair founded an online marketplace matching households with gig workers
  • Ageras Group started as the online marketplace Ageras.com (matching SMEs with accountants), but has since built the digital accounting solution Meneto and acquired the accounting software companies Billy and Tellow.
  • Ageras Group’s solutions have 340,000 users in total
  • The company was bootstrapped for its first five years, until the global private equity firm Investcorp Technology Partners acquired a majority stake in 2017. In 2020 the Dutch bank
  • Rabobank invested in the group through its venture arm, Rabo Frontier Ventures.
  • Ageras Group has offices in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Münich and Philadelphia in the US and has approx. 200 employees
  • Lugard Road Capital is a New York-based multi-billion dollar global investment fund primarily focused on public and private companies in the Internet, software, consumer, and technology sectors.

Contact:

Learn more online at nl.ageras.com and ageras.group.com