British startup Ontik, targeted on automating commerce credit score for B2B wholesalers, has raised a €3.2 million Seed spherical – practically doubling its authentic €1.7 million goal – to convey trendy monetary infrastructure to sectors nonetheless reliant on handbook processes.
The spherical was led by Firstminute Capital, with participation from PT1, Illusian, FJ Labs, Seed X, Tiny VC, and a bunch of strategic angels together with the founders of Slack and Affirm.
“B2B wholesalers are the monetary engine of the actual economic system—however most are nonetheless managing credit score with spreadsheets, telephone calls and handwritten notes,” mentioned Chris Smith, Co-founder of Ontik. “We’re giving them trendy, automated workflows that save hours every single day and unlock severe operational effectivity.”
Based by two brothers with prior exits and roots in commerce, Ontik brings an operator’s perception to an issue most tech firms overlook. The corporate’s long-term imaginative and prescient is to automate all the again workplace for B2B wholesalers—beginning with commerce credit score, and increasing to the crucial however time-consuming processes that maintain these companies again.
Ontik is constructing the “Stripe for the actual economic system”—automating credit score and collections for wholesalers who lengthen fee phrases to their prospects. The corporate is beginning with the €118 billion UK constructing supplies sector, the place margins are tight and back-office groups are stretched skinny.
Within the age of AI, commerce retailers are nonetheless operating quite a lot of their operations on pen and paper – a symptom, Ontik says, of an business lengthy overdue for digital transformation.
Ontik’s platform automates the order-to-cash lifecycle – from issuing fee phrases and chasing invoices, to resolving disputes and syncing information again into core techniques.
Retailers utilizing Ontik report:
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60%+ discount in time spent chasing funds
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30%+ quicker money assortment
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25%+ drop in card charges
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Fewer disputes and quicker resolutions
By integrating straight with main ERP techniques like Merlin, Unleashed and Intact, Ontik reportedly allows fast rollout throughout multi-branch operations – supporting deployment at scale throughout 1000’s of service provider areas, with out disrupting present workflows.
This automation is particularly worthwhile in industries like development provide, the place excessive transaction quantity meets low working margin, and the place groups are underneath strain to do extra with much less.
“Ontik is doing for commerce credit score what Stripe did for on-line funds,” mentioned Sam Endacott from Firstminute Capital. “They’re giving real-world companies the instruments to function with the pace and effectivity of recent tech firms – and the impression is already clear.”
In 12 months, Ontik has gone dwell throughout over 30 branches with retailers together with GH Brooks, AW Lumb, FORT and Collier & Catchpole. With over €1.1 billion in transaction quantity in its pipeline and 30% month-over-month development, Ontik continues to scale quickly throughout its sector.
