Zurich-based Yokoy, a fintech scale-up offering an all-in-one spend management platform, announced on Thursday that it has expanded its operation to Spain. Yokoy has already hired a local team to support regional operations from Madrid.
Earlier this year, the fintech company made its debut in the Netherlands, making its new Amsterdam office the hub for its European operations.
Yokoy says that mid-to large-sized enterprises show high interest in implementing automated spend management solutions in Spain.
“We are already engaging with Spanish customers and aim to grow our business in the coming months significantly. We follow an ambitious business plan for Spain, relying on our previous expansions as a blueprint and on our sound product know-how and financial expertise,” says Philippe Sahli, CEO of Yokoy.
He adds, “Unlike many companies that aim to automate processes, Yokoy’s mission is to transform how business spending is managed by leveraging applied artificial intelligence. We understand the needs of global but also regional companies when it comes to modernising their processes, and we designed the Yokoy platform to be customisable and scalable, covering the entire enterprise spend management cycle.”
The new Yokoy office in Spain will house employees across various office functions, focused on the Spanish market as the scale-up continues to grow and serve midsize to enterprise-level companies across Europe.
The announcement comes seven months after securing nearly €72.45M in a Series B round of funding led by Sequoia Capital. To date, the company has raised around €107M in funding from various investors, including Sequoia Capital, Balderton, Speedinvest, Visionaries Club, SIX Ventures, Swisscom Ventures, and Left Lane.
Yokoy has already made a few deals with the Spanish customers, says Lars Mangelsdorf to Silicon Canals in an interview held at TNW.
“We are doing quite well in Spain since we started a few months ago. We’re already competing against the big players in Spain and winning against them,” he adds.
Besides expansion within Europe, Yokoy is also planning on Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategy in the near future, adds Mangelsdorf. In 2020, the Swiss fintech acquired Innflow (previously FlowExpense), a consultancy service for SAP-centric information systems, to implement very specific customer needs.
Yokoy: What you need to know
Founded in 2019 by Devis Lussi, Lars Mangelsdorf, Melanie Gabriel, Philippe Sahli, and Thomas Inhelder, Yokoy offers an all-in-one spend management solution that automates expense, invoicing, and credit card processing through artificial intelligence (AI) and actionable insights.
In addition to saving time and creating efficiency for employees, the company claims to reduce up to 80 per cent of the costs related to spending management. Since the platform learns on the go, thanks to AI, the platform drastically reduces human intervention, potential errors, and finance team costs.
Currently, the Swiss fintech has over 250 employees, counts more than 500 customers and is present in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Serbia, and now Spain, with plans for further growth in Europe.
“We found that the appetite for automated spend management in the Dutch market has been particularly strong since our European headquarters in Amsterdam opened earlier in 2022. We acknowledge that businesses are looking at new ways to modernise their spend management processes while creating efficiencies for their finance teams and employees and reducing costs,” adds Lars Mangelsdorf, Dutch-Swiss co-founder and Chief Customer Officer, Yokoy.
“In the Netherlands, we currently employ over 30 people and counting, with renowned customers such as the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the fast-growing online supermarket Crisp. Being on a mission to change spend management and support finance teams in the Spanish region, we are using the gained expertise of the Dutch market as a blueprint while also taking into account the unique market positioning and client needs in Spain,” he concludes.
