• Ukrainian cash flow management platform Finmap closed a €1M funding round, with SMOK Ventures as leading investor
• Czech VC Presto Ventures, investment company Capital Genetics, and the CEO of tbi bank Petr Baron also join the round
• Finmap’s main product is a cloud service and iOS application that helps business owners keep track of their company’s money and personal finances
Despite the wartime challenges, Finmap, a cash flow management platform based in Ukraine, has managed to secure €1M in funding. What makes the story even more impressive is that one of Finmap’s co-founders, Ivan Kaunov, helped to close the funding round while he was serving on the battlefield of the country.
The company’s other co-founder and CEO Oleksandr Solovei, who founded the company together with Kaunov back in 2019, tells The Recursive about the determination that Kaunov has both on and off the battlefield when it comes to Finmap’s success.
“A quick story about Ivan: during our fundraising campaign, he was signing one of the documents while lying in the trench, just a few hundred meters from the frontline. The document needed to be signed exactly on this day, and it happened that Ivan was on his military task. He went on the Internet via Starlink, took out his mobile phone, and started to sign the document lying on the ground near the battlefield during the freezing winter,” Solovei recalls.
The success of Finmap’s funding round is also a testament to the founders’ determination to to build a successful fintech business, while fighting for their country’s future at the same time.
“He is almost always on the battlefield. Earlier, when he was in the infantry, Ivan was injured by helicopter fire. Thankfully, he recovered and then joined an Air Force military unit, where he works with air surveillance,” Solovei adds about Kaunov.
Scaling and expanding to new markets
Now, the company aims to continue developing and scaling in new countries such as Poland and Turkey.
The majority of the funds are used to expand the company. “The reason why we focus on Poland is that we had lots of clients there prior, which is why we decided to continue growing there. We see that there is a huge potential for growth. When it comes to Turkey, we see a diverse range of opportunities. The types of clients that this market has perfectly suit our product,” Oleksandr Solovei adds.
Finmap’s native mobile app was released in 2022, and it allows quick and easy entry of financial data, and management of entrepreneurs’ personal funds. So far, over 2500 businesses are using Finmap for daily financial management. In the past year, the number of foreign customers has tripled – from 11 to 36 percent, while Ukrainian entrepreneurs still make up the majority of customers – 64 percent.
“We have managed to combine powerful functionality with an easy-to-use interface, which is especially valuable and important for time-conscious entrepreneurs. We are glad that additional resources and support will help us to extend this “powerful simplicity” to new markets,” Finmap’s third co-founder Dmytro Dubilet explains.
The fintech startup gained its first investments in 2020, in the form of a state grant given by the Ukrainian Startup Fund (USF), which financed the project with $50K.
“I first met the Finmap team back in 2021 just after they raised their pre-seed round of financing and were looking to conquer the world. Then came the Russian invasion, loss of revenue, and they had to basically start from scratch. I was impressed by the resilience of Alex and the team who quickly restructured the company and put themselves in a position to grow outside the Ukrainian market,” said Borys Musielak, founding partner at SMOK Ventures.
Tbi bank CEO Petr Baron debuted with an investment into the project early in 2022 and proceeded with his support in this latest round.
”I am inspired by the drive and inspiration that the founders, Alex and Ivan, maintain at every stage of business development and with which they meet new challenges. They are evolving in tune with the project and are not going to stop achieving new milestones. Over the past year, Finmap has shown incredible growth and product adaptability, which once again confirms the importance of financial management and the relevance of this topic for European businesses,” Baron noted.
Aside from the planned expansion, Finmap has also identified new areas where it can expand, such as invoicing tools.
“We see that there is a huge demand for such tools even today in different European countries, including Poland. The next aspect is our freshly deployed applications. Earlier, we only had the web version of our platform, but right now we are actively designing Finmap’s iOS application, which will be followed by the Android version as well. Such steps also partially open the market for personal finances to us, rather than just business finances,” Solovei concludes.
