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Volta , a new startup with a squad cleave between two home base in Milan and Paris , has secured a € 6 million pre - seed troll ( $ 6.3 million ) to spring up a Modern vertical software - as - a - service weapons platform focused on B2B sales .
In more practical terms , the Volta team pitches its product as an equivalent to Shopify but focused on B2B dealing . While Shopify , the ecommerce titan that helps hoi polloi create an on-line computer storage and easily trade point to consumer , offer a B2B commerce platform , Volta thinks there ’s economic value in creating a company specifically focused on the B2B transactions .
agree to Volta , most midsize sweeping and distribution company around Europe still use paper catalogue and trust on manual order processing .
When they go to deal show and fit potential clients in their office , these company tend to beguile between several versions of their newspaper catalogs . Depending on the client and the context , they do n’t need to show the same inclination of items and Leontyne Price .
That ’s why Volta want to simplify the catalog management process . However , the company does n’t want to replace the effective old enterprisingness resource provision arrangement . When a purchase order is signed , the transaction is then process through the ERP .
But everything that happens before the transaction will potentially be handle by Volta . fellowship can upload their existing catalog from Excel filing cabinet or their ERP system of rules . They can chequer that the column taxonomy is correct and then import everything to Volta .
After that , employee can create catalogs from Volta ’s interface , share them with potential customer , cross current negotiation , and update orders on the fly front . Pricing and inventory data remains in sync with the ERP .
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“ The B2C sphere has acquire apace , with digital weapons platform supplant newspaper catalog and delivering integrated e - commerce solution . Meanwhile , B2B operation have fall back almost 15 years behind , still bogged down by outdated , manual process , ” co - founder and Colorado - CEO Paul Guillemin said in a assertion .
Volta also lets you manage customers directly from the chopine ’s interface . Users can create company profiles , make category , and group client in dissimilar categories . “ That only spread over 20 % of what you could do with Salesforce , but it ’s still good enough for most companies , ” Paul Guillemin told TechCrunch .
In the future , you may imagine more products and features that could be helpful to these midsize sweeping and dispersion company . Volta could summate logistics integrations and even funding options . The idea is that once company set out using Volta , they see the time value in manage catalogue in a SaaS program and start out using Volta for more feature .
This pre - seed round represents the large pre - seed round for an Italian inauguration . And part of the cause why the startup managed to fix € 6 million in good order out of the gate is because of the innovation team .
Paul Guillemin , the company ’s co - founder and co - CEO , antecedently foundedFretlink , a road freight transport startup that raised 10 of millions of euro but did n’t scurf as expected . He left Fretlink in 2021 . A few years after the leadership variety , the fellowship had to go through court of law - social club liquidation after a bankruptcy process .
Mario Parteli , the other co - laminitis and carbon monoxide gas - chief operating officer , antecedently founded Abiby , a subscription boxful party for cosmetics and beauty item . He ’s spent 15 years working in the tech industry at Facile.it , Rocket Internet , and more . The duo aims to attain their first major find with Volta .
Emblem , arelatively novel European VC firm , is moderate the pre - seed cycle with other funds and stacks of angel investors also participating , such as Robin Capital , Founders Future , Sequoia , and a16z through their scout program , the investiture firms of the Berlusconi menage or the Agnelli sept , and others .
