Karma Ventures and BlackFin Capital Partners led the 4 mEUR venture capital investment to ModularBank
Modularbank, the next-generation core banking platform announced its €4 million round of late seed funding led by Karma Ventures and BlackFin Capital Partners, with additional support from Plug and Play Ventures, Siena Capital and angel investor Ott Kaukver (ex-CTO of Twilio and Skype).
The backing from this powerful combination of investors paves the way for UK, European and wider global expansion, and will enable the company to bolster its engineering and commercial teams, and further invest in its technology platform.
The funding will initially be used to set up commercial operations, including an office, in the UK, and to increase operations in France, DACH and Southern Europe from Modularbank’s European base in Berlin. The company currently has 35 staff across Europe and aims to increase headcount to 100 by the end of 2021. In particular Modularbank will be looking to make further hires to its product and commercial teams, to accompany those who have recently joined the company from the likes of PayPal, Mambu and ICBC.
Margus Uudam, Founding Partner at Karma Ventures said: “Our reference calls with tier 1 banks and fintechs confirmed that Modularbank is unrivalled among its competitors, in terms of substance and depth of understanding of customer needs around core banking. The team has been building core banking solutions for more than twenty years and is incredibly well-positioned to become the next global leader. The traction they are already seeing from customers is just another proof point of the huge potential for Modularbank. The investment round was a very competitive one for a reason.”
Michele Foradori, Investment Director at BlackFin Capital Partners, said: “From our very first meeting with Modularbank, we had no doubt that this was the team with the right mix of motivation, capabilities and experience to build a successful company in the financial software landscape. Later in our investment process came the confirmation: an elegantly designed cloud-based core-banking platform which, in less than 24 months of development, is already ahead of many competitors. At BlackFin, we are very proud and eager to be sitting next to Vilve, Rivo and the other co-founders on their journey to become the new standard in banking core software.”
The Ellex team in Estonia who advised Karma Ventures and BlackFin Capital Partners on the investment was led by Counsel Antti Perli and included Senior Associate Hanna Pahk and Associate Merlin Liis.
Karma Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm, specialised in late seed and A round investments in Europe’s most promising tech startups.
BlackFin Capital Partners is a fully independent private equity and venture capital firm focusing on financial services.
Modularbank is a next-generation core banking platform. It underpins the aims of both regulated banks and other businesses in meeting customer needs and aspirations by enabling the rapid rollout of new financial services.
