Cledara, a software management platform that gives companies greater control and insights into their SaaS subscriptions, has raised $20 million in a series A round of funding.
Founded out of London in 2018, Cledara is setting out to help companies of all sizes deal with so-called SaaS sprawl, with some companies subscribing to as many as 200 distinct online services via the browser. While this is testament to the strengths of the SaaS business model and the broader cloud movement, it can also create a somewhat unwieldy administrative landscape for IT departments trying to keep a handle on everything that they’re paying for.
This is where Cledara enters the fray, serving as a “system of record” that gives insights into what applications are being used, renewal reminders, and all the associated costs, spend analytics and forecasts. Its customers, which include online travel search giant Trivago, manage more than 2,500 different SaaS products through the Cledara platform, allowing them to centralize all their payments in a single platform.
Cledara platform Image credit: Cledara
This also gives Cledara a lot of data into SaaS trends and patterns, which the companies uses as part of its recently-launched Cledara Discover product, which helps companies choose the most suitable SaaS applications for their needs.
“Cledara now holds the largest data set in the world about SaaS purchasing, usage, renewal and cancellation for software buyers in 28 countries,” Cledara cofounder and CEO Cristina Vila told . “Cledara Discover uses that data to help companies select the optimal software based on their existing stack, vertical, geography, size and stage.
Cledara Discover Image Credit: Cledara
The core underlying problem is that SaaS is often procured within businesses “bottom up,” meaning that individual teams and employees choose the software they want and then pay for it either through their company card or expense it back via their personal card. This is pretty much the polar opposite of how software used to be procured, with the decision-makers at the upper echelons of a company deciding what software to buy before deploying it across the board. While the freedoms afforded by the “bottom up” approach are undoubtedly positive, it does then become difficult to keep on top of spend and usage company-wide and at an individual level.
“Many Cledara customers use more than 200 SaaS products to run their business — every additional SaaS product that a company uses increases the administrative burden on a business,” Vila said. “Ineffective processes around SaaS makes it hard for companies to scale the way they manage SaaS.”
Cledara had previously raised a small pre-seed round of funding back in 2019, followed by a seed round a year later, taking its total financing to a little more than $4 million. The company also recently announced its launch into the U.S. market where it now counts an office in Denver, Colorado. But while its latest funding will be used to help drive its growth in the U.S. market, the bulk of its employees still remain in its existing London and Barcelona Offices, though it is actively hiring for sales, marketing, operations, and tech roles in the U.S. The company’s two cofounders, Vila and COO Brad Van Leeuwen, will also relocate to Denver as part of its expansion plans Stateside.
Cledara’s series A round was led by CommerzVentures, with participation from Nauta Capital, Notion Capital, Carbide Ventures, and Massive.
