Keeping tabs on the tab, Cledara raises $20 million to go all in on US market

London’s software management platform Cledara has raised $20 million in a Series A round that will see the company accelerate operations in the US market. Designed to help teams understand, manage and control the SaaS they use so they can scale operations, comply with regulations and save money, the startup has raised $24.3 million to date.

Sir Walter Scott’s “Oh what a tangled web we weave,” first comes to mind when describing the reason of being behind Cledara. While the latter part of this famous quote doesn’t apply, or at least shouldn’t, the former certainly does when it comes to growing businesses.

From the, “Hey, this could help us do this” to the, “We really need to get on top of X and this software would help us out”, any growing company will tell you that the stack of software subscriptions can get out of control in a hurry. Particularly if there’s no central oversight. (This is the point at which CFOs begin to weep).

Helping to keep tabs on everything, everywhere, and all at once, Cledara offers growing companies the ability to homogenise all their SaaS purchases via credit and debit cards issued by Mastercard, and generates a single source of truthiness when it comes to what costs what and could we be getting a better deal elsewhere.

“Cledara is a result of my life-long desire to start a company that focuses on helping people,” commented Cledara CEO and founder Cristina Vila. “By helping growing companies discover, buy and manage the software they use to be successful, we empower them to focus their valuable time on what ultimately matters most - their people and customers.”

While the UK remains Cledara’s largest market, with the company claiming that software purchased through its platform grew 830% in the last 12 months, the US is now its second-largest player, with the company clocking a 35% month-over-month growth rate since launching its services across the pond this past March.

CommerzVentures led the $20 million Series A round with Carbide Ventures and Massive participating. Existing investors Nauta Capital and Notion Capital also continued their support.

“We see tremendous potential in Cledara's ability to organise vast amounts of data surrounding software payments, usage, and buyer preference which frankly we have not seen in any other player in the market,” concluded Carbide Ventures’ Pankaj Tibrewal.