London fintech Claimer brings in $4.2 million to help firms claim government funding
London-based fintech startup Claimer has raised $4.2 million in a seed round to make it frictionless for companies to claim financial incentives from the government. The new money will allow the company to continue to scale in the UK and plan to launch into a second market.
The round was led by Project A Ventures, with participation from Moonfire Ventures, helloworld.vc and a group of angel investors, including Errol Damelin (co-founder of Wonga), Matt Clifford (Chairman of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency), Ian Hogarth (former CEO of SongKick), Harry Briggs (partner in OMERS Ventures) and subsequent investors Ben Holmes (ex-Index Ventures) and TrueSight Ventures.
The current challenging VC market environment is only expected to increase the demand for non-dilutive funding as startups look to maintain the pace of innovation. Despite the fact that governments set aside billions in innovation incentives for start-ups and scale-ups globally, the barriers to accessing them are high. Whether it’s tax credits, grants or other local tax breaks, it’s difficult to apply for them. The eligibility criteria and the application process are often complex and time-consuming, and require specialist knowledge that technology companies do not have.
According to the UK fintech, it aims to build accessible public funding infrastructure to make the experience of claiming incentives for innovation 10 times easier. By abstracting away the massively inefficient data entry and communication inefficiencies of R&D tax credits and grant applications, customers instead get more time, more focus and more money to build their business.
To date, the company has submitted over 700 claims. According to Claimer, companies using the platform can initiate a claim in as little as 10 minutes, while having the peace of mind that applications are accurate and maximized. They typically charge for complex R&D projects with benefits from £30,000 to £2 million. To do so, the claim requires a fee of 5% (capped at £10,000) of the relief claimed.
Claimer CEO Adam McCann said: “We’re building Claimer to be the de facto way for startups and scaleups to claim government incentives, starting with tax relief for R&D. The R&D claims industry is broken. Our vision is to accelerate innovation globally by eradicating this opacity and complexity between technology companies that need to claim incentives and governments that want to issue them.”
The R&D requirements solution has been used by the likes of Otta, Nested, Unmind and Hubble.
Sam Cash, partner at Project A added: “Research and development is a key driver of economic prosperity and GDP growth. We are delighted to support Claimer in enabling innovative companies to claim the R&D relief they are owed from governments, in a way that is significantly simpler and cheaper than today’s solutions.”
