Chift, a fast-growing provider of unified APIs for business software integrations, has secured €2.3 million in funding from a number of premier investment firms and business angels. The funding round was led by Entourage, the young Ghent, Belgium-based fund specializing in B2B SaaS and founded by Pieterjan Bouten (founder and former CEO of Showpad). Other investors include Shapers, a fintech-focused fund based in Lisbon and managed by ex-Hedosophia investor Philippe Teixeira da Mota, a sector heavyweight who has served on the boards of successful scale-ups like Qonto, Lydia, and N26. They are joined by early investor Seeder Fund, which increased its participation on the back of Chift’s recent growth, and business angels who are fintech industry leaders from Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Spain.
The seed round will allow the company to build on its early growth as it strives for leadership in offering European SaaS companies the fastest, easiest and most secure way to integrate with other business applications to the benefit of their own developers, customers, users and partners. Integrations enable SaaS companies to connect to other software products – typically through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) – in order to augment the value for its users.
As more business software applications continue to enter the market, it’s become increasingly important and challenging for SaaS companies to create, maintain and monitor integrations with relevant third-party software vendors.
Chift saves SaaS companies and developers valuable time, money and resources by helping them manage the complexity of business software integrations through unified APIs which give them access to several software connections with only one integration. This empowers them to focus on their core product offering, enhance their competitive advantage, increase their Total Addressable Market, and foster collaboration within the fintech ecosystem.
“We received a lot of interest for our fundraising, allowing us to choose the best investors in terms of personal fit, expertise, and network. The new investors had the best arguments: Entourage for its network and “founder-led” DNA and Shapers for its incredible fintech expertise. Our business angels are also extremely well-connected in the sector and throughout Europe. We are thrilled to have them on board!” said Gauthier Henroz, Founder & CEO of Chift
Founded in 2022 by Gauthier Henroz, Henry Hertoghe, and Matthieu Hertoghe, Chift quickly onboarded clients in Belgium and France, leading to a pre-seed funding round the same year. A few months later in 2023, Chift joined Station F in Paris, the world’s largest technology startup incubator, and was selected as one of the 40 most promising companies on campus. In 2024, Chift continued to establish itself in the European software industry, signing up leading fintech companies like Pennylane, Agicap, Pleo, Mollie and Qonto as clients to help them integrate with other business software providers.
“In addition to the drive, vision and ambition of the founders, we consider Chift to perfectly align with our focus to support the flourishing landscape of AI-driven accounting and financial tools in Europe,” added Pieterjan Bouten, General Partner & Founder of Entourage
“Chift’s product is very successful and very pleasant to use. For us, it’s really interesting because Chift allows us to acquire more customers in a very pragmatic way,” commented Nicolas Mille, Product Manager at Agicap.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/06/belgian-startup-chift-raises-e2-3-million-seed-to-help-saas-companies-build-integrations-at-scale/
