Tokyo, Japan – July 24, 2013 – freee announced today that it has received $2.7 million in Series A funding from DCM and Infinity Venture Partners, which will enable the company to accelerate its product development. The company also announced that it has tracked more than 6,500 sign-ups from Japanese small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) for its automated accounting/bookkeeping platform and successfully started to convert those busiensses to paid customers.
“In Japan, more than 99% of SMBs use stand-alone accounting softwares for bookkeeping, all of which require dual-entry bookkeeping knowledge. Most accounting software users manually input data by looking at invoices and receipts.” said Daisuke Sasaki, CEO and co-founder of freee. “On top of that, there was no full-stack accounting software that runs on Mac or tablets in the market even though an increasing number of SMBs rely on those platforms. As a result, using accounting softwares has been a big pain for SMBs.”
freee is an automated online accounting software developed for SMBs. It syncs with your bank accounts and credit card accounts and automatically categorizes income and spending through text analysys. All users have to do to generate financial statements is to review how freee has categorized items and click to approve. Because freee is a jargon-free product and can automate bookkeeping, any SMBs can keep books effortlessly.
“freee is so easy to use even for someone like me who did not have any bookkeeping or accounting knowledge. With freee, it’s easy to see where money comes from and where money goes to and now I have a clearer view on how my business is going. It was simply an amaging experience that I can keep books just by clicking to approve”, said Tetsunori Yuasa, a freelance online marketing consultant.
With Series A fund, freee will accelerate its product development in the following three areas:
- Automation and integration: Automate bookkeeping processes further by integrating freee with various tools used by SMBs including POS, e-commerce platforms and CRMs;
- Collaboration: Make collaboration much easier by adding access control features, communication features and workflow features;
- Excellence in user experience: Enhance user experience on all devices.
About DCM
DCM is an early stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Tokyo with more than $2 billion under management. DCM has investments in more than 140 technology companies across the United States and Asia and provides hands-on operational guidance and a global network of business and financial resources. DCM has backed industry-leading companies such as 51job, About.com, Clearwire, eDreams, Foundry Networks, Kabu.com, Sling Media, SMIC, and VanceInfo as well as upcoming startups such as Bill.com, Bridgelux, Happy Elements, PapayaMobile and Trion Worlds. Recent successes include China-based IPOs: Renren, BitAuto, DangDang, Luxin and VIPShop and US-based M&A and IPOs: Fortinet, PGP (Symantec) and Sandforce (LSI).