Katana raises $3.9 million to help D2C manufacturers scale

Katana fills this gap by offering a smart, modern, and affordable cloud-based solution, the first of its kind to focus on visual interactions and user experience.

August 23, 2021

3 min read

Team Katana

Katana Team

We are proud to announce that Katana has recently closed a $3.9 million seed funding round, which includes $2.2 million of new funds from 42CAP, a leading seed investor in European B2B software, based in Germany, as well as from our previous backers. It also includes the conversion of a $1.7 million pre-seed convertible note from late 2018 financed by angel investors.

Today, more and more manufacturers adopt a direct-to-consumer business model, managing without retailers, wholesalers, or any other type of middleman. By doing so, they can save costs, get full control over their brand image, and personalize the shopping experience for their customers.

However, when it comes to managing inventory, production, and business operations, they struggle with a choice between messy spreadsheets and costly enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, offered by leading ERP brands such as SAP or Infor, which is not designed for the needs of direct-to-consumer manufacturing.

Katana fills this gap by offering a smart, modern, and affordable cloud-based solution, the first of its kind to focus on visual interactions and user experience.

We are absolutely delighted that Katana is part of our portfolio. The team delivers what we call a truly seductive solution, for a global market on the rise. With their first-hand understanding of manufacturing processes, they offer companies unimpeded access to the new era of directed production. Moreover, Katana highlights Tallinn as one of the most interesting hubs in Europe in the years to come.
— Alex Meyer, General Partner of 42CAP

Katana’s Founders. From left to right: Kristjan Vilosius, Priit Kaasik, Hannes Kert

We couldn’t be happier to have 42CAP on board and are extremely grateful for our current investors’ continuous support. We’re thrilled with the opportunity to fuel our growth even further and establish Katana as the leading smart manufacturing platform for SMEs.
– Kristjan Vilosius, Founder and CEO at Katana

Our current team is based in Estonia and U.S., and it includes former team members of Pipedrive, Skype, and Microsoft.

We plan to use the funding to speed up the development of new features and solutions, as well as expand the team, with experts in the fields of software development, marketing & sales, customer support, and product management.

Interested candidates can request more details about available positions by contacting us at [email protected].