WAY2VAT RAISES $5 MILLION IN FUNDING
WAY2VAT, a leading cloud-based travel expense and automated VAT reclaims system, is pleased to announce financing rounds of $5 million in funding. Following $1.5 million in seed funding in 2016, the company has now raised an additional $3.5 million in Series A funding.
WAY2VAT, founded in 2016, provides sophisticated travel expense management of automated foreign VAT reclaims for companies worldwide. It offers full transparency and control over your expenses. WAY2VAT has sold to large enterprises around the world, and is experiencing growing revenue annually.
WAY2VAT is a B2B/2E (Employee) platform that manages travel and expenses and VAT reclaim for corporations, with just one click of the WAY2VAT app – thus providing better SLA for corporate business travelers. It’s the only all-in-one platform that can do so, working on a revenue-sharing model based on a number of patents with disruptive Automatic Invoice Analyzer (AIA) technology.
The company is led by Amos Simantov, WAY2VAT’s CEO and Founder, who has more than 20 years of experience as a top executive, including as CEO and VP Sales of major global high-tech companies. He has a proven track record in leading companies to economic success, including several exits and successful M&As.
Arnon Yaar, the company’s VP R&D and Co-Founder, is an innovative leader with extensive experience at the Converse Innovation Lab, creating disruptive new services and technologies for the past 15 years.
Dr. Roy Shilkrot, the company’s Chief Scientist and a PHD at MIT Boston, specializes in human-computer interaction, computer graphics and computer vision. Roy leads the Computer Vision team for the Automatic Invoice Analysis (AIA) project. With AIA, WAY2VAT can handle any type of receipts/invoice expense – in dozens of languages, with different sizes, logos, colors, printouts and more….all extracted and analyzed automatically.
Aviv Barshaf, the company’s VP Finance and Co-Founder, has vast experience in corporate finance. He has guided numerous companies through strategic and financial challenges – including both startups and publicly traded companies.
The funding rounds were led by several investors:
- Da Vinci Capital – A private equity fund specializing in growth capital, buyouts, and middle market investments, who helped fund this round through Global FinTech Solutions (GFS).
- iAngels – Specializing in equity crowdfunding.
- Poalim Ventures Capital – Part of Poalim Bank.
- Standard Bank- Africa’s largest bank.
- Moneta Seeds – Moneta helped lead both rounds of WAY2VAT funding. Moneta is a leading investor in FinTech companies, and is headed by Adoram Gaash, who is also WAY2VAT’s Chairman of the Board.
Adoram Gaash, Managing Director of Moneta, said of the funding:
“We believe strongly in WAY2VAT’s management going forward. They have demonstrated proven execution capability, and we are certain they will continue to innovate their products and expand globally to serve their growing customer base”.
Amos Simantov, WAY2VAT’s CEO, also discussed the funding rounds, and what it means for the company.
“With this round of funding, WAY2VAT will be able to double our staff, and fund sales and marketing operations in New York and London, as well as R&D operations in Israel. We are currently planning for more significant investment rounds going forward, with the company set to grow aggressively throughout the US and Europe.
Our overall vision is to be the world’s leading VAT reclaim platform not only for enterprises, but for small and medium sized businesses as well – who often don’t have a solution in place for T&E and VAT reclaims. This blue ocean market gives us opportunities to penetrate an enormous untapped market of 20 billion euros annually or more.”