Accounting startup Freee adds $6 million in funding

Daisuke Sasaki, CEO and co-founder at freee.

Freee proved again today that accounting software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies can be a hot commodity by revealing a US$6 million series B2 round of funding. This round was led by Pavilion Capital and Recruit Strategic Partners. It comes after a series B1 round of US$8 million in April. At that time, DCM and Infinity Ventures Partners were providing the funding.

Founded in 2012 by ex-Googler Daisuke Sasaki, the service is now used by over 120,000 small or medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Japan. Freee is linked up with local banks and payment providers in order to make bookkeeping easy for business owners. It can also assist with other functions like tax filing and payroll management.

The company says the money will be used “to accelerate its development and further strengthen its market leading position.” The software is designed for use in Japan so overseas expansion does not appear to be part of the firm’s immediate future.

Freee will need a strong showing to separate itself from SaaS competitors like MoneyForward. MoneyForward has made news in recent weeks for winning a business partnership with Yahoo Finance and also integrating Rakuten Edy accounts into its software.

In a statement, Sasaki looked to the future. “In Japan, SaaS penetration among SMBs is still around 17% […] we are on the mission to help SMBs simplify and automate back office tasks as a whole. Our goal is to be the leading business management cloud platform for SMBs,” he said.

See: Daisuke Sasaki is freeing small businesses from their accounting nightmares