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Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Kota raises $14.5m in funding to grow business
Irish-founded insurance benefits platform Kota , formerly known as Yonder , has raised $14.5 million (€12.8 million) in funding to bring globally accessible and frictionless employment benefits for employees That brings the total funding raised by the company to $22.9 million over three rounds. The new Series A round was led by Eurazeo, with existing investors EQT Ventures, Northzone and Frontline Ventures taking part. New investors 9Yards and Plug and Play also contributed to the round. 'Kota really stood out to us,' said Eurazeo's Elise Stern. 'With a tech-first approach, they've built a robust technical and financial infrastructure: deep integrations with insurers across dozens of countries, visibility across the benefits stack, and a seamless API that allows partners – from HRIS to payroll – to embed benefits natively.' READ MORE Kota will use the funding to expand its reach into more markets, increase the variety of insurance carrier partners in its products, and also grow its team. 'We're pretty ambitious. Our team is mainly made-up of engineers and specialists in things like some insurance and compliance. So we're doubling down there,' said CEO Luke Mackey. 'Where we invested a lot is making sure that we built the best engineering and product teams, best integrations teams and building great relationships with insurance companies. We have a small sales team in Dublin, we've expanded that team into the UK now. We have offices in Dublin and London, and we're hiring.' Kota is aiming to simplify health and pension benefits for global businesses and employees. 'Europe is exceptionally complex when it comes to insurance and that obviously feeds into benefits and the providers remain very fragmented country to country,' Mr Mackey said. 'The regulators are different. That just creates a lot of complexity, creates a lot of costs. That means that brokers are still the route into [the] market for small companies. 'What we're trying to do is build that underlying infrastructure, bring the insurance companies more online and make them easy and accessible in a very user-friendly way.' The company has also obtained its Central Bank of Ireland authorisation, with Mr Mackey saying it allowed the company to scale outside of Ireland, and passport across 30 European countries. The company is also expecting a boost from pension autoenrolment, which is due to begin next year. Founded in 2022 by Mr Mackey, chief technology officer Patrick O'Boyle and director of engineering Deepak Baliga, Kota began offering its services in 2023, and has since facilitated access to employee benefits for hundreds of small and medium sized companies. 'We're at a critically low level of housing stock' for buyers and renters Listen | 33:06
Irish Independent
22-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Kota raises over $14m in Series A round to drive its worker-benefits software
The company, formerly called Yonder, also announced it has secured a Central Bank of Ireland licence, becoming one of the only tech platforms regulated to deliver benefits across Europe. Kota (as Yonder) was founded by CEO Luke Mackey, Patrick O'Boyle and Deepak Baliga. Its customers include Zoe Health, Poolside, Carwow, Tines, &Open and Protex AI. Kota integrates with some of Europe's largest insurance providers, including Vitality in the UK, ONVZ in the Netherlands, Sanitas in Spain, Irish Life Health in Ireland and Allianz Global Care internationally. The company says that the funding will be used to expand the Kota workforce, increase the variety of insurance carrier partners in its products and accelerate customer acquisition. The Series A round was led by Eurazeo, which is listed on Euronext Paris, along with existing investors EQT Ventures, Northzone, Frontline Ventures, and new investors 9Yards and Plug and Play. Employee benefits are systematically undervalued and expensive The company's service aims to fix what it calls a 'broken' system where a combination of old-fashioned insurance or benefits providers, PDFs and manual processes make benefits inaccessible and unmanageable to a lot of employees. The company claims to fix this, comparing itself to Revolut's effect on traditional banking. It integrates directly with insurers and pension providers, giving employees immediate access and control, as well as giving HR teams a single platform to manage everything. 'Employee benefits, which can make up 25pc of total compensation, are systematically undervalued and expensive,' said Luke Mackey, Kota's CEO. 'I experienced this as a founder and a general manager, managing benefits in email, between brokers and insurance companies, completely disconnected and alien from anything else in the business. It's entirely out of date. Ultimately, no one on the team connected or engaged with them, no matter how much we invested. 'It's not surprising. Insurance benefits are delivered in clunky portals or in PDFs, which is so unengaging compared to the financial experiences employees are used to. 'Kota integrates directly with insurance companies so we can control that experience and make it easy to roll out and run benefits, no matter who you are or where your team is. 'This means that employees can quickly understand, enrol, access coverage, retirement plans, or other benefits, and actually value them.' Kota says that employee benefits, while growing into a $70bn market, are still 'unfit' for lean, forward-thinking start-ups and scale-ups populated by millennials and Gen Z workers. 'With a tech-first approach, they've built a robust technical and financial infrastructure,' said Elise Stern from Eurazeo. 'This includes deep integrations with insurers across dozens of countries, visibility across the benefits stack, and a seamless API that allows partners from HR information systems to payroll to embed benefits natively.'
