Munich-based Klar, touted to be the Single Source of Truth for e-commerce brands, has raised a seed funding of €2.3 million. Besides the investment, Klar has been officially launched today via waitlist after being developed with over 80 brands in closed beta.
Investment details
The investment round led by dedicated European seed fund Cherry Ventures (invested recently in Tacto). Also, it is backed by notable entrepreneurs and angel investors, including Benedikt Sauter (Xentral), Moritz Weisbrodt (Alaiko), Malte Horeyseck (SellerX), Samir El-Sabini (Juni), Benjamin Kremer (YFood) plus the founders of Moss, DTC Ventures as well as OMR, Europe’s leading marketing conference.
Klar will use the investment for the further development of the product, especially addressing the daily needs of the management and marketing teams of e-commerce companies. The startup will also invest in the expansion of their data science and engineering team
“Our goal with Klar is to provide 95% of eCommerce brands with 95% of the value a world-class in-house team could generate, in 5% of the time and cost,” said co-founder Cillié Burger.
“We’re so excited Max, Cillié and Frank joined forces again to build Klar. They know firsthand the struggles that brands face as they try to gain valuable insights into their data and growth journey,” said Christian Meerman, Cherry Ventures founding partner and ex-Zalando CMO. “As eCommerce sales continue to rapidly grow, achieving data fluency and transparency is a must. We believe Klar’s vertical and dedicated approach will ultimately replace a lot of the horizontal software out there that brands currently have to stitch together.”
“With our unified, yet customizable data model we can reflect the reality our customers operate in and, in turn, provide them with accurate reports, meaningful benchmarks and detailed insights,” said cofounder Max Rast. “But that’s just the start. Klar is not just a data tool but will become the central operating system for eCommerce brands. Shopify has armed the rebels. We will now turn them into an army that powers itself by providing insights, knowledge, and direction.”
How was Klar born?
Klar was founded by Maximilian Rast, Cillié Burger, and Frank Birzle after having worked together for 10 years. They met in South Africa, where they built Jumia, Africa’s largest e-commerce retailer.
The idea for Klar first emerged during Max’s time at YFood, where he was looking for a tool to manage the company’s data. Even after evaluating more than 20 different tools, he couldn’t find one that satisfied his company’s needs: a single source of truth that reflects the reality of how the business operates.
Also, he looked for a tool that provides insights and highlights opportunities while being affordable and quick to set up. As there was no such tool, they joined to create Klar.
What does Klar do?
In today’s DTC e-commerce trend, tens of thousands of smaller independent brands with €1 million to €20 million in revenue, serving specific verticals and communities exist in parallel to large incumbents like Amazon. They cannot afford a full business intelligence team and therefore still rely on spreadsheets or Google Data Studio for their reporting. Klar specifically addresses those companies’ needs.
Klar allows brands to understand their customers and provides clarity on how to grow their revenue and profits — all while being quick to set up, highly customisable and at a price any brand can afford.
By extracting and aggregating data from all their relevant third-party data sources, Klar helps brands to get a transparent understanding of their financials, customers’ purchase patterns, and their marketing efficiency across all channels. It creates the business intelligence platform for SME e-commerce brands.
