Katana, an ERP for SMB producers, raises $34M • TechCrunch

Katana, an enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) platform for small and medium-sized producers, has raised €35 million ($34 million) in a Collection B spherical of funding.

ERP is a type of enterprise administration software program that may serve any variety of features inside an organization, from advertising and danger administration, to produce chain administration and past. Integrations are pivotal to any ERP software program, because it usually entails taking knowledge from totally different programs akin to HR, CRM, accounting, and order administration to generate insights and evaluation — at its core, ERP is all about figuring out potential issues and enhancing effectivity.

Based out of Tallinn, Estonia, in 2017, Katana is an ERP for the manufacturing sector, with pre-built integrations for most of the most typical instruments {that a} producer would possibly use, together with ecommerce platforms (e.g. Shopify and WooCommerce), accounting (e.g. QuickBooks and Xero), transport, forecasting, CRM, and extra. Collectively, these varied integrations can assist a producer predict what their future stock wants will likely be primarily based on historic or real-time gross sales knowledge, for instance, to make sure that they don’t run out of inventory or components.

Finish of ‘made in China’ period

A giant driving drive behind demand for such software program is direct-to-consumer (D2C) manufacturing, which has seen smaller, native producers — or “micro-manufacturers” — take away most of the intermediaries that had been historically essential to get their merchandise made.

“The rise in D2C manufacturing has pushed a small manufacturing renaissance, giving customers a wealth of choices that cut back the maintain of manufacturers counting on mass manufacturing,” Katana cofounder and CEO Kristjan Vilosius defined o TechCrunch. “As manufacturing strikes nearer to the ever-increasingly acutely aware client, manufacturers that depend on native manufacturing and stock are gaining market share. Briefly, the ‘made in China’ period is ending.”

This has been aided by trendy applied sciences akin to 3D printing and computer-aided laser cutters, permitting corporations to provide items on a smaller scale away from centralized, mass-production factories. In tandem, the emergence of on-line marketplaces, ecommerce software program, and the broader cloud computing motion has made it simpler to imagine larger management of the complete enterprise course of, from manufacturing by to gross sales.

“Producers have already got a tech stack of instruments like ecommerce platforms, transport instruments, and accounting software program,” Vilosius continued. “What’s lacking is a central source-of-truth that streamlines the stream of knowledge and minimizes guide knowledge entry and, consequently, human error.”

Legacy ERP software program from the likes of Netsuite and SAP are usually geared towards bigger companies, which is why we’ve seen a slew of youthful upstarts enter the fray to a lot VC fanfare lately, with Katana and its ilk making an attempt to usher in a extra trendy toolset purpose-built for SMBs — and in Katana’s case particularly, SMB producers.

“Supporting this new wave of producers is vital — enterprise enterprise suites like Netsuite and SAP include hefty prices and a plethora of options and functionalities that exceed the wants of small-to-medium-sized companies,” Vilosius mentioned. “The ERP area can be recognized for poor person expertise and person interface, and low buyer satisfaction. Many small companies go for spreadsheets regardless of being error-prone and tough to scale as their companies develop.”

Katana had beforehand raised round $16 million, the majority of which arrived by way of its Collection A spherical final 12 months, and within the intervening months the corporate claims to have quadrupled its annual recurring income (ARR), grown its headcount from 30 to 140, and scaled its buyer base from “a whole bunch of micro-businesses to 1000’s of shoppers within the SMB section,” based on Vilosius. On prime of that, the corporate launched an open API for patrons to construct their very own integrations.

With one other $34 million within the financial institution, the corporate mentioned that it’s well-financed to “deliver manufacturing software program into the digital period,” which can embrace rolling out “extra superior accounting integrations,” the corporate mentioned.