Runa Capital, a venture fund with Russian roots operating globally, has just participated in a $4 million seed round for SimpliField. Based in Lille and Paris, France, this startup has developed a SaaS solution which it claims can change “the way retailers sell and deliver great customer experience.”
The French investment fund CapHorn also took part in the deal alongside with existing investor 50 Partners Capital. The respective contributions of the funds have not been disclosed.
The SimpliField application provides store and field teams (sales reps, merchandising, coach, audits…) with offline access to every guideline, operation, and report template on every device.
“We tear down silos between services and make sure everyone is on board and aligned to reach the level of excellence expected by customers,” wrote SimpliField founder and CEO Benjamin Zenou in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
Thus brands and retailers can “track their KPIs in real time, eliminating the guesswork in retail execution and increasing sales efficiency in each PoS.”
The startup claims to serve already more than 60 major international retail companies from over 10 countries.
Zenou plans to expand beyond Europe quickly through his company’s partnership with SalesForce.
“All retail players must become digital – this is essential to their survival,” commented Runa Capital in a statement.
Runa, which targeted essentially Russian startups when launched in 2011, quickly switched to a global strategy. The fund has invested mostly in US startups, but also in a few French companies. Thus in 2012, the fund injected $1.5 million in mobile analytics startup Capptain, 18 months before it was acquired by Microsoft.
Runa’s most recent deal in France, in February this year, involved Keymetrics. This startup has developed a SaaS monitoring service for server infrastructure, making it easier for developers to build Node.js applications.
