Germany’s Celonis raises $27.5M to help companies be more efficient through process mining

Celonis, a big data analytics startup based in Germany, has raised $27.5 million from Accel and 83North to grow its product globally.

Founded out of Munich in 2011, Celonis has hitherto bootstrapped its way through its expansion into 25 countries and claims clients such as Siemens, KPMG, Deloitte, Bayer, and Vodafone, among others. Its core raison d’être is to help companies increase their efficiency by up to 30 percent using a process management technique known as process mining, or automated business process discovery. This involves mining data from event logs to identify key insights. Ultimately, it’s all about extracting knowledge that can reveal how a company is executing on its business processes.

Above: Celonis

The fresh cash influx will be used to “boost go-to-market operations, improve technology, and further global expansion,” according to Alexander Rinke, cofounder and co-CEO of Celonis. “Our goal is to create a new category in the analytics space and bring process mining technology to customers all over the world,” he said. “Not only will this funding give us more flexibility to plan and execute our growth strategy, but both investors can support us with valuable practical experience, infrastructure, and strategically important contacts.”

With big data spending gearing up to hit almost $50 billion by 2019, according to IDC, all the big tech companies are investing heavily in a range of related fields in order to predict traffic jams, aid drug discovery, and even prevent healthcare fraud. While big data is being used to solve major global problems, Celonis and others, such as Fujitsu, are using process mining to streamline and improve operational efficiency within companies. But Celonis reckons that it’s steps ahead of the competition.

“Our customers and partners particularly highlight that Celonis is offering an enterprise-ready process mining solution that can handle the big data requirements of Fortune 500 companies,” fellow CEO and founder Bastian Nominacher told VentureBeat. “With Celonis, we are offering the leading process mining technology, which combines high speed analysis with a very intuitive UI and all other features required to operate process mining on an enterprise scale.”