Circula receives double-digit million amount

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the travel expenses start-up hard. Circula has now been able to convince new investors with an adapted business model.

Circula has raised fresh capital in a financing round. Carsten Maschmeyer's fund Alstin Capital led the round, with Peak from the Netherlands and Storm Ventures from the USA also participating. The HR management start-up Personio has also invested.

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Circula's sales initially plummeted. Circula then adapted its business model: Since then, corporate clients have been able to bill expenses as well as travel costs via the start-up's app. "Overall, we doubled our number of customers in 2020 despite coronavirus and our user growth has even reached 150%. We reached the pre-crisis level in October 2020 and subsequently exceeded it," Circula founder Nikolai Skatchkov told start-up scene in February of last year.

Nikolai Skatchkov and Roman Leicht founded Circula in 2017. The start-up offers an app for managing employee expenses, travel expense reports and employee benefits. Its customers include medium-sized companies and numerous start-ups, including N26, Amorelie and the Sanity Group.