Ukrainian startup Upswot has raised $4.3 million during a seed round, according to its co-founder Dmitry Norenko’s announcement on March 1.
The startup’s four founders: Andriy Davidchuk, Yaroslav Yaroslavsky, Dmitry Norenko and Dmitry Sivolap created a service that allows banks to easily access information about a business’s financial condition.
The seed investments came from Common Ocean, CFVVentures, SpeedUp Group, First Southern National Bank, ICBA and angel investors.
Upswot is a service that apprises banks of the needs and financial histories of businesses applying for loans, information that is normally provided by analysts. This saves the banks time and money, which allows businesses to get cheaper loans and better deposit rates.
Business data is collected from 120 applications including Amazon, 1C, Oracle, Sage, Prozorro, PayPal, Nova Poshta and Uber. The service provides tools to analyze it.
According to Norenko, the startup has already received acquisition offers but hasn’t accepted any of them.
“We were glad to receive offers to sell the company, because it proves that our product is needed, and gladly declined them,” he told the Kyiv Post.
The team still has a lot of work ahead of it.
“Successful fundraising is not something that startups should celebrate,” Norenko wrote on Facebook. “Now we have to expand our team, reach new customers in more countries, primarily in North America.”
Now that Upswot’s platform has been completed, the team is working to expand sales. Upswot’s clients include banks and financial firms that serve small and medium businesses.
The company was founded in January 2019 and was primarily based in Poland but later moved to the U.S.
The team has 40 people but the company plans to increase its staff to 60 in the near future.
The project won two investments from the Ukrainian Startup Fund in the summer of 2020.
