Cherry Ventures, Europe’s largest dedicated seed fund, has recently led a current €5.3M investment in Munich-based industrial procurement tech startup Tacto. Tacto is a SaaS company that developed an AI-based software to run industrial procurement for SMEs. Last year, Cherry Ventures also invested in Berlin-based third-party e-commerce business aggregator, SellerX.
This funding also saw the participation of UVC Partners, Visionaries Club, and Personio’s Hanno Renner, GetYourGuide’s Johannes Reck, Forto’s Michael Wax, and Helsing’s Torsten Reil.
“We are confident that Tacto can become a category winning procurement suite for SMEs by helping these businesses to unlock significant savings and create resilient supply chains from day one,” said Christian Meermann, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures. “Moreso, Tacto’s team combines a strong tech foundation with a deep understanding of the industrial world to work on fixing industrial supply chains, one of the most pressing issues of our time. With all of its hidden champions, Germany is the perfect location to build the future leader in procurement tech.”
Attempting to fix an exhausted supply chain
The rebounding economy saw the disruption of global supply chains, with material shortages and hindered industrial operations caused by demand and supply imbalances in several sectors.
While so many companies remain with filled order books, a big portion of those orders is ending up unfulfilled or often delayed. 2021 saw supply chain-related losses of €38B and so far, no end seems yet in sight.
The average industrial company spends around 50% of their revenues on procured goods. With ever-increasing product sophistication and distribution of supply chains, buyers are having to increasingly be aware of delivery time, quality and in-budget supply of thousands of parts, while also focusing on sustainability.
“With Tacto, we are accelerating the digitalisation of our procurement: we are finally moving away from Excel-based processes towards digital procurement with a solution that is embraced by all employees. Only a few months after implementation, we have already been able to achieve significant savings,” commented Matthias Schlotter, Chief Procurement Officer at Schwäbische Werkzeugmaschinen, a Tacto customer.
Using AI and data to solve industrial supply chain issues
Tacto is based in Munich, Germany and was founded in 2020 by André Petry, Johannes Groll, Nico Bentenrieder. The company has developed an intuitive data-driven and automated solution for procurement in mid-sized industrial enterprises. Its AI-based software gives customers a transparent overview of their procurement activities, algorithmically highlighting risk and savings potential while also automating transactional workflows in sourcing and supplier management to focus on what matters.
Tacto customers can focus on strategic work, leverage savings potential, and reduce complexity, without the need for costly IT resources. It has been helping German SMEs especially since it is less expensive compared to other available tools, isn’t outdated and takes a short time to implement.
“Tacto is partnering with the industrial market leaders of today to build the digital leader of tomorrow. Together we future-proof the backbone of the world economy by running industrial procurement – digitally, intelligently and sustainably,” remarked André Petry, M.D and Co-Founder of Tacto.
