Employee benefits startup Kota has raised $5.3 million in a seed round led by Swedish investor EQT Ventures.
The Irish company, founded in 2022 and formerly known as Yonder, enables small and medium-sized enterprises to connect a range of benefits like health and life insurance policies and pensions in a single platform using an API. Kota helps businesses and employees track their enrollment and contributions through integrations with benefits providers.
“Looking across the HR tech sector, you have great banking tools for consumers and businesses, remote work companies, and expense management but benefits aren’t as interoperable,” Luke Mackey, Kota cofounder and CEO, told Insider.
“Europe is very fragmented with lots of different pension and insurance plans making it hard for small companies to offer benefits because it’s expensive and often very manual.”
The startup’s platform helps companies manage their policies and benefits internationally, helping to cut out intermediaries in transactions and dealings, Mackey said. Currently, the business works with companies like &Open, Fonoa, and Unmind.
Kota’s seed round was led by EQT Ventures with participation from existing investors Northzone and Frontline Ventures. Notable angel investors include Remote CEO Job Van Der Voort and OpenAI’s head of developer experience, Romain Huet.
EQT tracked Kota since the company raised its pre-seed funding in 2022. Since then the startup has gone through its beta and launched with its first customer, Mackey added. The funding will go towards further expansion of the Kota team, which has already more than doubled to 19 staff this year with a particular emphasis on sales and marketing.
“We’re experiencing a lot of post-Covid tailwinds after a period of excess spent we’re building and growing in a market that’s been less hot,” Mackey said. “It’s great validation for us to grow in a sustainable market and it’s helping us to find product market fit.”
Check out Kota’s 11-slide seed funding pitch deck below:
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