Transfluent opens crowdfunding round on Invesdor
Fast-growing translation company aims to raise up to 1,5M€
Platform-driven translation agency Transfluent has today opened an investment round on crowdfunding equity platform Invesdor. The target for the round is to raise at least 600 000 € to scale up sales.
The first investor commitments are from venture capital funds Visionplus and Aloitusrahasto Vera, along with angel investors Peter Vesterbacka and Kari Karvinen. Existing investors include Mårten Mickos, Paul Bragiel and former Reuters CEO Tom Glocer.
This is one of the first times in Nordic region that general public can invest with a venture capital fund with same commercial terms. With this modern and digital approach, Transfluent along with its investors sets a standard for other fundraisers to follow.
Transfluent’s self-serving and extremely scalable platform has disrupted the way businesses use translation services. The platform was originally tailored for the rapid needs of social-media powered global business and comes with a powerful API that allows integration of translation services to virtually any platform. Today Transfluent’s human-powered and high-quality translations cover all types of content for more than 400+ different companies in variety of industries. Some of the biggest customers include Cap Gemini, Pfizer, Pinterest, Tieto, Visma and Elisa.
Transfluent is especially strong in business translations, with a range of specialist translators caterings needs from creative marketing translations to sensitive legal documents. Most of Transfluent’s current business comes from large enterprise customers, but the service is well suited for businesses of all sizes and types.
An interesting niche that Transfluent dominates in Finland is the country’s successful game development industry. There is a huge demand globally for game translations, particularly in East Asia and China, and Transfluent is exceptionally well positioned to attack the lucrative market.
"Our near term target is to become the largest translation company in Finland in the next 2-3 years. At the same time, we already have international customers and we are preparing to expand operations internationally. Our long term business goal is to be the world’s first translation company to have global annual revenues of over 1 billion euros", Transfluent founder and CEO Jani Penttinen says.
Transfluent turns translating around. Ordering translations through Transfluent is so fast and easy that translations become an integral part of everyday business.
"Since most translation companies share the same professional translator resources, the key differentiator is the technology platform and the API connectivity for placing orders and managing translations. This is where Transfluent is miles ahead of competition", Jari Tuovinen, Founder & Partner of Vision+ says.
Using the online interface, customers can submit material to be translated, follow progress in real time, send messages to the translators and access the history of their past translations. This can save up to weeks compared to traditional translation agencies.
The Transfluent API allows deep integration into the enterprise tools already in use. Examples of successful integrations include customer support systems and large ecommerce websites, where thousands of translation tasks may need to be handled daily.
"The business model works. For the past two years, Transfluent’s product revenue has been growing an average 8% month - to - month (2.5x annual increase) and the growth rate has recently been increasing. This is a very exciting and interesting story and we are happy to be part of it at Invesdor", Lasse Mäkelä, CEO of Invesdor says.
"In fact, the combination of speed and quality is not only serving existing translation needs better, it is opening new markets where translation was previously not considered possible. Instead of hiring a customer service team who speaks dozens of languages, you can now have a team of English-speaking customer service agents responding to customers in virtually all the world’s languages", Jani Penttinen says.
Globally, translation industry generated about 37 billion euros in 2016. The translation industry is growing at about 7% per year. The largest global translation companies, Lionbridge and Transperfect, command about 1% share of the total industry revenue.
For more information about Transfluent and how to invest, please see the pitch at Invesdor https://www.invesdor.com/transfluent
Contact details:
Jani Penttinen, founder and CEO, Transfluent
+1 408 400 3687, jani@transfluent.com
Andrea Di Pietrantonio, Invesdor
+358 40 031 6459, andrea.dipietrantonio@invesdor.com
Invesdor operates an online investment platform that connects ambitious European growth companies with investors worldwide. Invesdor has helped raise more than 15 million euros and hosted more than 60 successful equity crowdfunding campaigns. A financial technology (fintech) company founded in Finland in 2012, Invesdor is the Nordic market leader in equity crowdfunding measured in invested capital and revenue in 2015. Invesdor's clients include private and publicly traded companies from Finland, the UK, Norway and Denmark as well as investors from more than 50 countries. Invesdor has offices in London and Helsinki.
