Irish employee benefits startup Kota just raised a $5.3 million seed round. Check out the 11-slide pitch deck it used to land the funds.

• Irish employee benefits startup Kota has raised $5.3 million in a seed funding round.
• The Dublin-based company enables SMEs to connect and track benefits on a single platform.
• EQT Ventures led the round with participation from existing investors Northzone and Frontline.

Kota, a startup that provides employee benefits, has raised $5.3 million in a seed round led by Swedish investor EQT Ventures.

The Irish company, formerly known as Yonder, was founded in 2022 and uses an API to connect a variety of benefits such as health and life insurance policies and pensions in a single platform. Through integrations with benefits providers, Kota assists businesses and employees in tracking enrollment and contributions.

“Looking across the HR tech sector, you have great banking tools for consumers and businesses, remote work companies, and expense management, but benefits aren’t as interoperable,” Kota cofounder and CEO Luke Mackey told Insider.

“Europe is very fragmented with lots of different pension and insurance plans making it hard for small companies to offer benefits because it’s expensive and often very manual.”

According to Mackey, the startup’s platform assists companies in managing their policies and benefits on a global scale, thereby eliminating the need for intermediaries in transactions and dealings. Currently, the company collaborates with &Open, Fonoa, and Unmind.

EQT Ventures led Kota’s seed round, which included existing investors Northzone and Frontline Ventures. Remote CEO Job Van Der Voort and OpenAI’s head of developer experience, Romain Huet, are among the notable angel investors.

EQT has been following Kota since the company received pre-seed funding in 2022. Mackey added that the startup has since completed its beta phase and launched with its first customer. The funds will be used to expand the Kota team, which has already more than doubled to 19 people this year, with a focus on sales and marketing.

“We’re experiencing a lot of post-Covid tailwinds after a period of excess spent we’re building and growing in a market that’s been less hot,” Mackey said in a statement. “It’s great validation for us to grow in a sustainable market and it’s helping us to find product market fit.”

Below is Kota’s 11-slide seed funding pitch deck: