Celonis co-founders Martin Klenk, Bastian Nominacher and Alexander Rinke (LtoR), © Celonis

Celonis raises $27.5 million Series A funding

The Funding is led by Accel Partners and 83North (formerly Greylock IL). Celonis will use the funds to accelerate the global adoption of its solution. Munich Startup had the chance to ask co-founder Bastian Nominacher  some questions regarding the investment.

Celonis’ Process Mining big data technology automatically analyses enterprise event data to improve transparency and efficiency to its customers’ business-critical processes. The technology provides insight into how a company’s business processes are being executed, uncovering cost-drivers and weak spots. The technology is already in use by over 200 customers across 15 different industries and 25 countries that include include global Fortune 500 companies such as Siemens, KPMG, Deloitte, Bayer, Vodafone, as well as a wide range of medium-sized companies.

Celonis was founded in 2011 by three former students of the Technical University of Munich, Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher and Martin Klenk, and was bootstrapped through strong customer demand.

Laurel Bowden, Partner at 83North, comments:

“Celonis offers an outstanding product that finally delivers a ‘true and holistic view’ of how organizations create value. By that it goes way beyond what traditional analytics could ever accomplish. Its benefits are clearly and quickly understood by customers and can be easily translated into business and bottom line benefits. The market is enormous. All enterprises, large and small, could use Celonis. We are just at the beginning of seeing process mining use-cases.”

Harry Nelis, Partner at Accel, adds:

“We are excited to partner with the Celonis team to help them achieve their mission of taking the Process Mining category worldwide. Alex, Bastian and Martin have built a high-growth and profitable company straight out of university, and already serve a long list of large multinational customers, all without raising any external funding to date. We look forward to helping them reach their next stage of growth, particularly in the US market.”

In 2015, Celonis was named Germany’s fastest-growing technology company in the Deloitte Fast 50 Awards, following a four-year revenue growth of 3,951%. Co-Founder Alexander Rinke was recently listed in Forbes’ 30-under-30 Europe’ list.

Interview with co-founder Bastian Nominacher: “The investor’s expertise and network had a strong impact on our decision”

Bastian Nominacher, © Celonis
Bastian Nominacher, © Celonis

How did you get in touch with the investors?

The investors themselves sent us a direct request after having heard about the strong growth and the increasing success of our company in the market place.

How long did you negotiate the investment?

We managed to finalize negotiations fast, i.e. within a few months.

How are you going to exploit the funding?

We’re going to use the capital to expand our worldwide sales and service infrastructure. Customers in all relevant markets, especially in the USA and Asia, shall have the chance to benefit from our Process Mining Technology. In addition, we want to strongly invest in further development of our technology in order to enable customers to implement Process Mining faster and apply it in more use cases.

Do you receive additional support from the investors besides the funding, e.g. knowhow or contacts?

The investor’s expertise and network had a strong impact on our decision. Accel and 83North have gained a lot of experience in establishing successful software companies and in creating new technology markets. Thanks to this investment, we are able to access an extensive, worldwide network of managers and technical experts that we can use to further grow Celonis. All this helps us to work faster and more effectively towards our goal to turn our vision into reality.

How do you personally feel about the investment?

The investment is a great opportunity for us to make our vision come true: to establish a new category of analytics software for process mining. With Accel and 83North as our partners, we are able to successfully build a global software company.