October 3 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian e-commerce platform developer CloudCart said on Tuesday that it has launched a pre-Series A fundraising round, targeting fresh capital of 3 million euro ($3.14 million) to drive expansion into new strategic markets such as Romania and Greece.
The e-commerce start-up has attracted as inaugural investor in the fundraising round Ruslan Leteyski, the founder and CEO of local Shopify and WooCommerce plug-in provider Checkout X, CloudCart said in a press release, without providing details of the transaction.
Founded in 2016, CloudCart has offices in the Bulgarian capital Sofia and in California, U.S. The startup has developed an e-commerce platform offering marketing tools to small and medium-sized merchants for increasing online sales and expanding their business. The start-up has over 2,000 active merchant partners in seven countries, which generated online sales of more than 300 million euro in 2022.
CloudCart's new round of funding takes place three years after an initial investment of 1.25 million euro by Bulgarian early-stage growth investor New Vision 3 Fund. In early 2022, CloudCart also receive backing from Elevator Ventures, the venture capital arm of Raiffeisen Bank International. The current pre-Series A round is open to both current and new investors.
The fundraising aims to solidify CloudCart's position as market leader in e-commerce and to support the growth of online businesses in the region, without the need for advanced technical knowledge or substantial infrastructure investments. CloudCart's approach involves establishing partnerships at the early stage of entering new markets with SMEs such as payment service providers, courier services and ERP systems, among others.
"The main reason why I support the company is that CloudCart is actively developing the Bulgarian e-commerce ecosystem. Compared to big players like Shopify, CloudCart stands out with its local approach. Not only do they understand the specific needs of local merchants, but they also successfully adapt this approach to each new market they enter," Leteyski said.
Sofia-based Checkout X is a checkout and post-purchase upsell platform, which Leteyski founded in 2018. In the three years since its launch, it has generated gross merchandise volume (GMV) of 680 million euro and contributed to over 44 million euro in additional sales for active merchant users.
($ = 0.9530 euro)