On average, Agicap’s clients manage 15 different bank accounts each. So the chief financial officers (CFOs) working for these companies sometimes struggle to make sure that there will be enough money in the right bank account to pay employees and suppliers across different subsidiaries, countries and currencies.
That’s also why they turn to Agicap to centralize cash-related data and forecast future cash positions. The Lyon-based startup just raised a Series C funding round of €45 million (around $48 million at current exchange rates) from a single investor, AVP, the VC firm previously known as Axa Venture Partners.
The fintech startup previously raised $100 million, back in 2021, right in the middle of the digital funding frenzy around the pandemic. At the time, the company reached a valuation of €415 million (or around $450 million at current exchange rates). The value of the business has since inflated “substantially”, per Agicap, though it isn’t disclosing by how much.
“We aren’t disclosing the exact valuation, but we have managed to increase it substantially since 2021,” co-founder and CEO Sébastien Beyet (pictured above) told TechCrunch. Pressed on this he gave us a hint of the new valuation: Les Échos previously reported that Agicap was raising at a valuation between €700 million and €800 million (or $750 million to $860 million) — and Beyet said: “We’re sticking with this range.”
Narrow focus — ‘huge’ market
Agicap’s relative success comes down to a narrow focus on treasury management software — it isn’t trying to do everything at once like most fintech startups.
It’s also a relatively untapped market as many companies still rely on Excel and file exports from bank accounts and ERP software. Evidence of this lies in a recent study Agicap did with 500 European CFOs of midmarket companies. When asked about the tool of choice to manage and forecast their cash positions, 80% of them answered Excel.
It’s also worth noting that Agicap’s main customers are CFOs and financial departments. And when teams in charge of money like a product they’re not going to unsubscribe anytime soon.
Agicap customers can sync data from their existing bank accounts, credit institutions and ERP solutions. It then acts as a central repository to view everything related to past and future cash flows. But Agicap isn’t just a visualization dashboard; users can initiate and schedule transfers directly from its interface, too.
“We think that we’ll be able to use cash management as the basis for what we call the CFO suite, and provide other tools to CFOs and treasurers,” Beyet said.
In that vein, more recently, the startup added accounts payable and accounts receivable. These features help you get paid faster as you can see pending invoices and nudge customers in case they’re late. Similarly, Agicap imports purchase orders so that you can pay suppliers on time and use that data for your upcoming budgets.
The startup currently has 8,000 customers with around half of them in France. Most of its remaining customers are spread across other European countries. “We focus on mid-sized companies, with an annual revenue of €5 million to €10 million on average — and up to €500 million,” Beyet said.
“We’ve already reached a break-even position on a cash basis for this quarter. So we didn’t need to raise any additional funds to continue our development. But we believe our market is huge,” he added.
In addition to hiring new people to find new customers, Agicap plans to use the funding to launch new features around credit management and foreign exchange risk management.
What about offering credit products directly? “We don’t want to become a bank,” said Beyet. “In other words, we don’t want to take on the financial risk of lending money ourselves. We know how to make software, and that’s what we intend to focus on.”