Selling fuses and cables online: doesn’t it make you dream? And yet, Kyklo, a start-up created by two French people, raised $ 8.5 million a few weeks ago from big names in the venture capital American, proof that the digital transformation of huge sectors but still very traditional, makes investors salivate.
Prior to settling in New York State, Kyklo was born in Thailand. This start-up, which helps electrical distributors launch their e-commerce sites, was founded by two French people in Bangkok in 2015. “ We both worked at Schneider Electric, and as a salesperson and distributor partner, we had to spend our lives in paper or PDF catalogs to find product references. The market had a real need to digitize », Explains Kyklo CEO Rémi Ducrocq. With his partner Fabien Legouic, they decided to create an online sales platform for these distributors, a tailor-made catalog that lists millions of products from different manufacturers, and to market it in the form of SaaS. They choose the Greek name Kyklo, which means both the circle (increasing the circle of influence of distributors, helping them move online) and the Milky Way (creating a “galaxy” that connects producers, distributors and customers. of this industry on a tech platform).
At the start of 2018, the two French people first made a first funding round of 1.5 million dollars and opened an office in Singapore, then quickly identified their target market: the United States, the largest individual market in the world. . The country offers the best development prospects, in a market estimated at 640 billion dollars and while 80% still go through traditional distribution channels. Last June, Kyklo set up its US headquarters in Buffalo, New York, for several reasons: its proximity to distributors located in industrial cities of the Midwest such as Cleveland, Detroit, Columbus or Indianapolis, but also its quality of life, safety and of course, more affordable prices than in the big coastal towns.
A few weeks ago, Kyklo just announced that it had completed its $ 8.5 million seed round with two renowned venture funds: IA Ventures, which invested in the success story French Datadog (the cloud infrastructure monitoring system, which entered Nasdaq in September 2019 and is now worth $ 26 billion on the stock market) and Felicis Ventures, one of the first shareholders of Shopify. With this new money, the group intends to invest in the R&D of the application, which remains based in Bangkok, in order to add more millions of product references. But will also increase its marketing and commercial strike force in the United States, with a 50% increase in its workforce within a year.
The start-up has also been able to obtain the support of the biggest names in the electrical industry. ” We have forged partnerships with Schneider Electric, Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Festo US and Wago. These major players understood that our platform was essential to digitize and maximize the distribution network of their products. », Adds Rémi Ducrocq. At this stage, Kyklo has already created a catalog of 2.5 million product references for more than 35 distributors. It now intends to step up the pace, and offers its distributor customers the opportunity to launch their e-commerce site in record time, ie 30 days or even two weeks for the simplest of them. Kyklo’s ambition is simple and strong: to quickly gain market share and become the world leader in the sector.
