HomeEstonia-StartupsEstonian startup Eurora Solutions secures €40 million for its cross border compliance...

Estonian startup Eurora Solutions secures €40 million for its cross border compliance platform

On a mission to break down barriers that block global sellers, Eurora Solutions has just picked up €40 million in one of Estonia’s largest Series A funding rounds. The funding was led by Connected Capital with existing investors, including Change Ventures, Equity United and Eurora’s founder Marko Lastik also participating. 

Founded in 2018, Eurora offers an AI-based and machine learning-backed cross-border e-commerce compliance platform, Eurora takes care of all cross-border trade regulations so businesses can focus on their core activity. 

E-commerce is undoubtedly a massive sector, and part of it is an increase in international trade and purchases made across borders. Amidst this, businesses are having to juggle ever-changing compliance and trading regulations. For example, in July last year, the EU ended the €22 import VAT exemption, and new trading regulations between the EU and the rest of the world gradually came into effect. This was intended to create a level playing field with local European manufacturers and retailers.

Complying with this new regulation in the high volume, low value-per-package e-commerce market has been a challenge for merchants and logistics operators from the UK, the US, China and the rest of the world. As a result, sending goods to customers in the EU has become more expensive, slower, and more bureaucratic for customers and merchants from outside the EU. These players are now looking for software-based solutions that can help handle the billions of cross-border packages affected by this new EU regulation. Solutions with a high degree of accuracy, speed and at a low cost per package are required.  

Enter Eurora. 

The Estonian startup’s AI/ML-based platform automates tax, compliance and customs services. It assigns e-commerce products an appropriate HS code, calculates the applicable VAT and duty amounts, and automatically creates electronic declarations for EU duties and taxes via simple API integration.

Marko Lastik, the founder and CEO of Eurora Solutions, explained: “The number of different declarations, codes, reports, records and tax calculations required in the international shipping business is ever increasing. Without the correct data sets and automated solutions for tax calculations and electronic declarations, cross-border trade has slowed down, resulting in severe delays, fines, increasing costs, loss of customers etc. Eurora’s AI uses 500+ million records of training data from actual transactions from the largest logistics providers in the world, giving Eurora the deepest knowledge of actual market practices. By using Eurora’s platform, merchants can make deliveries faster and at lower costs, which results in increased customer satisfaction and trust.”

According to Eurora, the platform can deliver more than 96% accuracy for e-commerce packages despite often patchy input data and operates at a fraction of the time and price of hybrid or manual code allocation solutions commonly used today. 

Eurora already has over 200 paying clients worldwide and has a massive market potential.  In the past decade, global parcel shipping volume has almost tripled, and by 2026, this market is expected to reach over 260 billion parcels delivered. What’s more, the B2B platform can be used by online sellers, marketplaces, logistics and postal companies, as well as tax and customs authorities.

The fresh funding will be used for geographical expansion in the UK, the US, and the Middle East, where rapid and high growth in the sector is expected, and product development and potential add-on acquisitions. 

Shaffy Roell, Investment Manager at Connected Capital, said: “We are excited to lead the investment into Eurora and actively support the team in scaling the platform globally. The founder and the full management team have impressed us with their quality, domain expertise, and vision for the company. We have seen a clear push from regulators to improve transparency and reporting for the increasing number of goods that enter through customs. We believe that Eurora has built a truly unique AI/ML-based platform, significantly improving compliance while reducing package delays and lowering costs for e-commerce parcels shipped into Europe.” 

Patricia Allen
Patricia Allen
is the former Head of Content at EU-Startups. With a background in politics, Patricia has a real passion for how shared ideas across communities and cultures can bring new initiatives and innovations for the future.
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