Hakio, a Danish SaaS company helping fashion and apparel companies make more accurate predictions about their future sales to optimise inventory levels, has raised a €4 million seed round. The funding round is co-led by People Ventures and Dreamcraft Ventures and joined by existing investors Blazar Capital and Founderment.
The investment will be utilized to further develop and expand Hakio’s platform, which leverages machine learning algorithms to enhance forecasting accuracy and tackle the global waste issue in the fashion industry. Besides data scientists and developers to further develop the platform, the funding will be used to expand the platform to new European markets.
Annually, retailers face losses of up to €1 trillion (or even more) due to poor planning, resulting in overproduction, lost sales, and operational inefficiency, multiple reports show. Founded in 2021, Hakio solves this by empowering companies to stock the right quantities at the right times, eliminating manual, non-value-adding work.
Using machine learning algorithms that analyze up to 150 data variables, including customer behavior, macroeconomic trends, and marketing data, Hakio captures abnormalities in markets and provide actionable insights based on state-of-the-art demand forecasts.
“By removing bias when creating a baseline forecast and subsequently including expert knowledge in a sleek and user-friendly platform, fashion brands can increase planning accuracy and reduce operational costs and working capital. This means companies can free up funds to use elsewhere,” said Hakio co-founder and CEO Malte Bjerg Vittrup.
Co-developed with clients such as Jack & Jones and Only, the platform could be a transformative force within the sector, as apparel brands annually spend an estimated €800M on planning and overproduction of billions of garments. With 20 people already working on improving the Hakio platform, the startup is looking to more than double the team to increase its impact and reach even more customers.
“At Hakio, we are driven by a commitment to reduce waste and cut losses due to bad forecasting. Already, we help brands reduce costs and improve profits, but now, thanks to our new investors, we have the resources and knowledge to further develop and scale Hakio to the next level, and we can’t wait to get going,” commented Malte Bjerg Vittrup.
“We’re thrilled to become part of Hakio as we believe they have the technology and team to significantly reshape the future of fashion planning. They offer the potential to save billions of euros lost to poor forecasting and transform how businesses operate,” added Claus Zibrandtsen, managing partner at People Ventures.
