Paid secures £2.2m seed funding for procurement automation

By Sunniva Kolostyak

Paid, a UK-based procurement platform, has raised £2.2 million in seed funding for its enterprise procurement automation solution from investors including Crane and Seedcamp.

The platform aims to provide up to 10x time savings for enterprise procurement teams, with up to 75 per cent reduction of costs, which can often range between 2-10 per cent of a company’s revenue.

The software transforms the procure-to-pay process by enabling efficient onboarding, project scoping, sign off and invoicing in one easy-to-use product which can be integrated in ten minutes.

The £2.2 million funding round was lead by early-stage tech investors Crane Venture Partners, along with participation from Seedcamp, Techstars and notable angel investors, including Angel Invest Ventures’ Jens Lapinski, GoCardless and Nested Founder Matthew Robinson, Outrun Ventures founder Chris Adelsbach (in a personal capacity), and former Microsoft head of corporate strategy Charles Songhurst.

The seed money will be used to reach more enterprises in the UK market, particularly as Covid-19 has led to supply chain disruption for 97 per cent of businesses.

As a result, enterprises are realising that they need to diversify both their suppliers and supply chain management to remain resilient, reduce costs and support their small and long-tail suppliers who are struggling to survive, Tom Howsam, Co-Founder and CEO of Paid, commented.

“Every SME who has ever dealt with large enterprises knows the pain and the time it takes to do even a simple thing like onboarding as a supplier, signing a contract, or getting paid on time. What they may not know is that that frustration is usually shared by the enterprise buyer, whose internal, one-size-fits-all process means they can’t move quickly,” Howsam said.

Also commenting on the funding round, Krishna Visvanathan, Founding Partner at Crane Venture Partners, added: “Paid offers an intuitive software-as-a-service platform that reinvents the procurement process. For enterprises and small suppliers alike, using Paid is a no-brainer, making it easier to manage a diverse supply chain through uncomplicated software. We are proud to back Paid as it builds a new category for supplier management in procure-to-pay transformation for enterprises.”

Paid, which also offers suppliers an instant payment option through its platform, was founded in 2018 and is now going live with telco company BT as a key client.

Cyril Pourrat, Chief Procurement Officer at BT, commented: “Companies, including BT, can incur huge costs when onboarding and managing suppliers. We needed a better, more agile way to manage our suppliers and Paid solves that problem, offering us a way to save man-hours and money in one easy-to-use solution. Paid, who is part of BT’s Procurement Digital Garage, has managed to reduce these costs, providing an easy and efficient way to work with smaller suppliers.”