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Photo: Mona Gindler, Partner at Senovo

The B2B SaaS specialist MONDA raises USD 5 million

Photo: Mona Gind­ler, Part­ner at Senovo
4. Septem­ber 2024

Berlin — Monda, the all-in-one data mone­tiza­tion plat­form, announ­ced that it has raised USD 5 million in a seed funding round.
The round was led by Senovo and Acro­ba­tor Ventures, with parti­ci­pa­tion from Techstars.
The capi­tal will be used to expand busi­ness opera­ti­ons in the US, grow the part­ner ecosys­tem and expand the plat­form to enable any busi­ness to secu­rely mone­tize data.
Monda’s soft­ware enables compa­nies to start and scale a data services business.
Monda has seen strong growth in 2024 and the plat­form is now used by over 150 Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) compa­nies that have crea­ted more than 6,000 data products.
Monda has built key part­ner­ships and inte­gra­ti­ons with world-leading cloud plat­forms such as Google Cloud, Datab­ricks and SAP.
Since the begin­ning of the year, the team has doubled to 32 employees.
In addi­tion, Monda is opening its first US office in Boston in fall 2024 to be closer to North Ameri­can custo­mers, who make up 50% of its custo­mer base.
Monda was foun­ded by tech entre­pre­neurs and data experts Thani Shamsi and Richard Hoffmann
as a spin-off of Berlin-based Datarade, the world’s largest compa­ri­son plat­form for data provi­ders. Thani Shamsi, foun­der and CEO of Monda, said: “AI has crea­ted a huge demand for high-quality and unique data sets to train AI models. Compa­nies have reco­gni­zed the mone­tiza­tion of their proprie­tary data for AI as a busi­ness oppor­tu­nity, but face an incre­asingly complex global data market. Having worked for a data provi­der myself, I know these chal­lenges first-hand. We have crea­ted Monda to enable any company to build a secure, growing and sustainable data services busi­ness — driving AI forward.” More and more AI compa­nies are trying to secure access to proprie­tary data sets to train and refine their models — and are signing data licen­ses with data-rich compa­nies like Reddit, Shut­ter­stock, or Yelp. But tech­ni­cal, regu­la­tory and opera­tio­nal chal­lenges prevent compa­nies from mone­tiz­ing their data: Buil­ding a successful data-as-a-service busi­ness invol­ves crea­ting data products, inte­gra­ting with data market­places, setting up data distri­bu­tion, secu­rely sharing data, hand­ling data licen­ses, and mana­ging compli­ance. Mona Gind­ler, Part­ner at Senovosaid: “As the sourcing and mone­tiza­tion of data moves into the main­stream, data provi­ders need better tools to manage the incre­asing comple­xity of the data market. Monda helps them reach more custo­mers while redu­cing opera­tio­nal over­head, putting the company in a strong posi­tion to lead this new soft­ware cate­gory. Thani and Richard have built a fanta­stic team and culture in Berlin. We are exci­ted to support their expan­sion into the US with the new Boston office.” Monda’s data mone­tiza­tion plat­form has three key diffe­ren­tia­tors: First, the product is easy to use and allows busi­ness users to create data products and publish them to their own data store­front or data market­places in just a few clicks. Secondly, Monda’s verti­cal SaaS approach enables compa­nies to run and manage their entire data services busi­ness on one plat­form. Thirdly, custo­mers appre­ciate the first-class service and support from an inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer care team. Part of the seed funding will be used to further deve­lop data inte­gra­ti­ons with cloud plat­forms, support unstruc­tu­red data products and roll out addi­tio­nal compli­ance functionalities.
Richard Hoff­mann, Foun­der and Presi­dent of Monda, said: “The opening of our first US office in Boston is a pivo­tal moment for Monda, our US custo­mers and for me perso­nally. I am curr­ently relo­ca­ting with my family from Germany to the United States to fully dedi­cate myself to the success and growth of our US client base and local team. The US has always been our most important market as a pioneer in data and AI inno­va­tion.” About Monda Monda is a leading B2B SaaS company in the data services industry.
Monda’s all-in-one data mone­tiza­tion plat­form enables any busi­ness to secu­rely share and mone­tize its proprie­tary data.
The company was foun­ded in 2024 by Thani Shamsi and Richard Hoff­mann as a spin-off of Datarade, the world’s largest compa­ri­son plat­form for data providers.
Monda’s vision is to create a global ecosys­tem for trans­pa­rent, secure data sharing to acce­le­rate the AI revo­lu­tion and progress.
— https://www.monda.ai/ About Senovo Senovo is an early stage venture capi­tal firm based in Munich and Berlin, part­ne­ring with excep­tio­nal foun­ders and buil­ding global B2B SaaS cate­gory leaders from Europe.
As a Euro­pean first-mover, the fund has been inves­t­ing since 2013 in a new gene­ra­tion of B2B soft­ware start-ups that enable the digi­ta­liza­tion of medium-sized and large companies.
Senovo invests after the first sales of a company in a late seed or Series A round.
The team of SaaS specia­lists looks for meaningful rela­ti­onships at eye level and regu­larly publishes their insights and exper­tise on https://medium.com/senovovc. — https://senovo.vc About Acro­ba­tor Ventures Acro­ba­tor Ventures is an opera­­tor-led VC focu­sed on (pre-)seed foun­ders buil­ding tech­no­logy and data companies.
The part­ners bring a deep under­stan­ding of AI/ML and opera­tio­nal excel­lence with a foun­­der-first mentality.
— https://acrobator.vc

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