Founded in 2015, Lithuanian open data startup Okredo has closed a €1 million seed funding round led by Lithuanian Business Angels Fund and Presto Ventures. Okredo’s SaaS platform helps SMEs assess the credibility, financial strength and sales potential of new and existing business partners and customers
Dealing with delayed payments from customers gives SMEs difficult economic risks. These risks are then often exacerbated by a lack of financial literacy combined with a lack of affordable tools to manage them. Smaller companies are particularly exposed to delayed-payment risk, as they don’t tend to have the budgets for expensive credit bureau reporting, human resources for in-house analysis, or financial training to sufficiently vet new and existing partners and customers.
With the EU’s Open Data Directive going into effect this year, businesses and other enterprises in member states are now required to report on data points that range from debt loads to changes in the c-suite. While this data is technically now ‘open’ (a work that remains in slow progress), it is actually hosted in different agencies. Some of these agencies are private, and they’re under to requirement or obligation to package the datasets in a way that is SME-friendly.
With AI-driven analysis, Okredo enhances raw, open data and packages it in the form of modules and reports through a user-friendly and customizable web GUI (Graphical User Interface). These modules and reports provide credit scores and insights which are updated during the entire lifecycle of a partnership, from identification of potential leads to monitoring of overall changes that can affect the business relationship.
In the event of customer non-payment, Okredo can help businesses determine whether negotiating, going to court, or publishing the debt on the platform will be the best course of action. The platform also includes a unique eco score, which allows businesses to assess the environmental impact of a company’s vehicle fleet.
Gerda Jurkoniene, the co-founder of Okredo, said: “Open data provides an immense economic opportunity for organizations, and we want to give even the smallest of businesses the means to effectively evaluate risks and explore new sales opportunities in order to thrive and prosper. Our vision is bold: we want to become a leading open data platform in Europe within the next five years. We are confident in our abilities and the capabilities of our platform to be able to scale quickly to new markets while at the same time provide best-in-class service to our customers.”
Currently, Okredo has 12,000 users, with 2700 corporate clients. This round of funding will be used by data innovators to expand from Lithuania into other European markets, namely Latvia, Poland, and the UK.
