Danish-founded Ageras raises €82M for fintech acquisitions

Danish-founded fintech Ageras announced today that it has raised €82 million for new acquisitions in an oversubscribed private placement round that brings the company’s funding to almost €200 million.

Ageras was founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneurs Rico Andersen and Martin Hegelund as an online marketplace matching small businesses with accountants and bookkeepers. Today, however, it has grown into a fintech company with approximately 250 employees and a comprehensive cloud-based software product.

Ageras provides accounting software to over 300,000 active European small businesses. By integrating its solutions into a single cockpit for invoicing, accounting, payroll, banking and finance, it enables business owners to focus on running their business. 

The raise will help the company fund new acquisitions. According to CEO Rico Andersen, negotiations are already underway with several potential acquisition targets:

We want to make it easier to be a small business in an increasingly difficult administrative and regulatory landscape by offering a fully integrated platform where companies can manage their banking, accounting and tax in one financial cockpit.

To deliver faster on that vision, M&A is an integral part of our strategy, where we have acquired technology and thus expanded our product faster than if we built everything from scratch. 

Currently, we see an attractive pipeline of potential acquisitions emerging, and the ones we eye reinforce our vision and goal 100 per cent; to become market leader and then go public.

Ageras achieved positive EBITDA for the first time in 2023, ending the fiscal year with a record-high ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) of €41 million compared to €27 million in 2022.

 Investcorp led the funding which included investment by Folketrygdfondet, and Lazard.

According to Gilbert Kamieniecky, Head of Private Equity Europe at Investcorp:

We remain impressed with the growth and strategic development of Ageras since our first investment in 2017. Therefore, we are excited to lead this investment round, which enables more accretive M&A to expand the product offering and gain market share.

Lead image: Ageras founders, Rico Andersen and Martin Hegelund. Photo: uncredited.