Tokyo, Japan - Sep 25, 2014 - freee accounced today that it will receive $6 million in Series B2 funding from Pavilion Capital and Recruit Strategic Partners. This follows the Series B1 funding of $8 million from DCM and Infinity Ventures that was concluded in Apr 2014. The strong investor support and additonal funding will allow freee to accelerate its development and further strengthen its market leading position among Japanese SMB market.
Daisuke Sasaki, CEO and Founder of freee, says “In Japan, SaaS penetration among SMBs is still around 17%. SMBs did not choose SaaS for accounting tasks until freee was launched. We successfully opened this market by offering the first online accounting software that can truly automate bookkeeping and help SMBs to run their businesses more effectively. The strong investor support that we have secured this year affirms the value we bring to the market. With this new funding, we will continue to add more features to our product, innovate ways to help SMBs, and accelerate freee’s growth. We have added payroll product in May and launched a new expense report feature today. We are on the mission to help SMBs simplify and automate backoffice tasks as a whole. Our goal is to be the leading business management cloud platform for SMBs.”
freee launched in March 2013 with the mission to liberate SMBs from time consuming back-office tasks, therefore enabling them to focus on their core businesses. The product is an online accounting software developed specifically for SMBs in Japan. It syncs with bank and credit card accounts to categorize income and spending items to automate bookkeeping. It is designed to be very easy to use, and users can even create tax filing forms without any accounting skills. freee also launched cloud based payroll product in May 2014 that will automate payroll tasks.
freee is used by over 120,000 SMBs in Japan. Since its launch, freee has been investing in improving the product by increasing bank coverage (1,600+ local banks supported), adding features, launching iOS and Android apps, and integrating with major SMB tools such as Square and AirRegi (a POS app by Recruit). Its freemium model’s paid plan starts at 980 JPY (~10USD) per month per business. The company was founded in July 2012 by Daisuke Sasaki, who previously led Google’s SMB marketing in Asia-Pacific region.
About Pavilion Capital
Formed in 2012, Pavilion Capital is an investment firm that is based in Singapore. It is wholly owned and funded by Temasek, and focuses on private equity investments in North Asia.About Recruit Strategic Partners
http://recruitstrategicpartners.com/Recruit Strategic Partners RSP Fund No. 5, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Recruit in Japan, is a venture capital firm investing in innovative startups from around the world.
Company name RSP Fund No. 5, LLC
Representative Akihiko Okamoto
Address 8-4-17 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
About freee and freee K.K.
freee is automated online accounting software that syncs with your bank accounts and automatically categorise entries to create financial reports. freee was launched on Mar 2013 and is offered to SMBs operating under the Japanese taxation system. It takes freemium model and its paid plan begins at 980 JPY (~10 USD) per month per business.
freee K.K. was founded in July 2012 led by Daisuke Sasaki, who previously headed up Google's SMB marketing in Asia Pacific region. freee is the winner of Invinity Ventures Summit Launch Pad 2013 Spring, the most prestigious demo event in Japan.
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Contact
Nao MaemuraE-mail：pr@freee.co.jp
TEL：+81-80-8492-3804