Eurora management team: (from left) Marko Lastik (founder), Anneli Aljas (CFO), Egon Veermäe (COO).
Eurora Solutions raises $40M in Series A to tackle e-commerce shipping delays caused by EU regulation changes.
- Reported as one of the largest Estonian Series A rounds.
- Eurora’s unique AI-based solution was developed with 22 scientists from the world’s top 1% universities and backed with support from European Union (EU) Archimedes Fund.
- Eurora already has over 200 paying clients worldwide that use its technology to process millions of parcels every day.
TALLINN, Estonia, April 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Eurora Solutions, an Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning-backed (AI/ML) cross-border e-commerce compliance platform, is announcing the closure of its oversubscribed Series A round, raising $40 million/£31 million. Amsterdam based Connected Capital led the round, with existing investors, including Change Ventures, Equity United and Eurora’s founder Marko Lastik also participating.
Eurora already has over 200 paying clients worldwide, including some of the biggest e-commerce players in Asia, such as JD.com, Yanwen and Topyou. These three companies alone process around billion parcels per year and deliver to more than 120 countries. The new funding will be used for geographical expansion in the UK, the US, and the Middle East, where rapid and high growth in the sector is expected, and product development and potential add-on acquisitions. In the past decade, global parcel shipping volume has tripled, and by 2026, this market is expected to reach over 260 billion parcels delivered.
In July last year, the EU ended the €22 import VAT exemption, and new trading regulations between the EU and the rest of the world gradually came into effect. This was intended to create a level playing field with local European manufacturers and retailers. Complying with this new regulation in the high volume, low value-per-package e-commerce market has been a challenge for merchants and logistics operators from the UK, the US, China and the rest of the world. These players are looking for software-based solutions that can help handle the billions of cross-border packages affected by this new EU regulation. Solutions with a high degree of accuracy, speed and at a low cost per package are required.
Eurora’s proprietary AI/ML-based platform automates tax, compliance and customs services. It assigns e-commerce products an appropriate HS code*, calculates the applicable VAT and duty amounts, and automatically creates electronic declarations for EU duties and taxes via simple API integration. The platform delivers more than 96% accuracy for e-commerce packages despite often patchy input data and it operates at a fraction of the time and price of hybrid or manual code allocation solutions commonly used today. Eurora was the first official VAT Intermediary and the first company to issue an IOSS number*.
The B2B platform can be used by online sellers, marketplaces, logistics and postal companies, as well as tax and customs authorities. Eurora’s compliance platform can automatically process 5,000 requests per second with up to 96% accuracy, the highest level of accuracy, speed, and automation available on the market. Marko Lastik has over 30 years of experience in logistics and is the founder and visionary of the platform, having created it together with 22 scientists from the world’s top 1% of universities, such as Tallinn University of Technology, StatLab (a spinoff company of the University of Tartu) and Software Technology and Applications Competence Centre in Estonia.
Marko Lastik, the founder and CEO of Eurora Solutions, said: “The number of different declarations, codes, reports, records and tax calculations required in the international shipping business is ever increasing. Without the correct data sets and automated solutions for tax calculations and electronic declarations, cross-border trade has slowed down, resulting in severe delays, fines, increasing costs, loss of customers etc. Eurora’s AI uses 500+ million records of training data from actual transactions from the largest logistics providers in the world, giving Eurora the knowledge of actual market practices. By using Eurora’s platform, merchants can make deliveries faster and at lower costs, which results in increased customer satisfaction and trust.”
Shaffy Roell, Investment Manager at Connected Capital, said: “We are excited to lead the investment into Eurora and support the team in scaling the platform globally. The founder and the full management team have impressed us with their quality, domain expertise, and vision for the company. We have seen a clear push from regulators to improve transparency and reporting for the increasing number of goods that enter through customs. We believe that Eurora has built a truly unique AI/ML-based platform, significantly improving compliance while reducing package delays and lowering costs for e-commerce parcels shipped into Europe.”
For more info:
Anneli Aljas
CFO
pr@eurora.com
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/
