Amsterdam and Tallinn-based OCCO, a B2B commerce platform that helps design professionals advance their workflow through AI and Machine Learning, announced on Monday that it has raised €750K in its Seed round of funding.
The designtech company claims it will use the funds to expand its services to new markets in Europe.
The investor
The round’s main investor is Oliver Ahlberg, founder of Skeleton Technologies which completed a $42M Series D funding in January.
Explaining the need for OCCO’s digital solution in the market, Ahlberg says, “I think for many people it would seem rather archaic to buy a plane ticket from a travel agency or order something from a paper catalogue. But that’s the daily life of interior designers: paper catalogues, emails, resellers. OCCO’s aim is to innovate all that and that’s what appealed to me.”
Ahlberg will also be joining OCCO as an advisor to support the company’s expansion and help raise finance for future growth plans.
Aims to digitalise the world of interior design
Founded in 2016 by Ander Soorumaa and Paul Veetousme, OCCO started out as a project sales company and worked closely with architects, real estate developers and B2B customers. The insights from these furnishing projects inspired the founders to create a digital solution to improve the interior design process for all professionals.
OCCO claims its customer-centric, AI-powered platform makes it easy for interior design professionals to find furniture and effectively manage projects through a single platform. The company aims to help professionals save time on product search and project management.
The company claims that its platform has digitised the product catalogues of more than 800 high-quality interior design brands from Europe. Having access to these products from one source has been found to shave off 27 per cent of monthly working hours for interior design professionals, claims the company.
The company’s focus is to disrupt the outdated interior design industry and bring innovation to design professionals.
Soorumaa says, “OCCO’s AI-based platform already helps hundreds of designers, and we are constantly working on developing this product based on user feedback. OCCO’s extensive database helps interior designers and architects find suitable products or alternatives faster than ever, thereby saving time and money.”
During the soft launch, OCCO has already secured 250 users from the Netherlands and Estonia, and increased its yearly revenue to €7M.
01
Beyond parental controls: How Rotterdam’s ChatLicense empowers kids in the digital age