Recently, robotic process automation (RPA) software firm Catalytic announced the closing of its $30 million financing round intended to boost its consulting, sales and engineering divisions.
Sean Chou, the CEO of Catalytic, told VentureBeat that the funds raised would be used in opening offices in various locations including New York, Palo Alto and maybe London.
Robotic process automation systems like the one developed by Catalytic help in automating repetitive workplace activities.
In fact, Catalytic’s platform has the potential of taking over 200 actions in a bid to automate things such as data processing through getting unstructured data from websites, internal systems, emails, and documents among other sources.
Chou claimed that he views Catalytic as comparable to the existing robotic process automation services on the market, especially from companies such as Automation Anywhere, UiPath and Blue Prism.
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“If you look at our customer base of large companies, almost all of them use existing RPA tools and some of them use multiple RPAs vendors,” Chou said.
The funds may also be utilized in expanding Catalytic’s operations with partner entities.
According to Chou, nearly two-thirds of the available automated bots tasked with undertaking workplace operations are sourced from external partners.
“We’ll have partners that provide a huge range of capabilities, and that’s actually been a really, really powerful mechanism for us, because they’re not just like an integration partner,” he said.
“It’s a partner that gets completely embedded in our system, and customers can use them immediately and natively as anything that we built-in. And they don’t have to go out and source the company, they don’t have to create a contract with them, they don’t have to manage invoices separately, and so that’s actually a really big differentiator, too.”
Intel Capital led the $30 million financing round, which included other participants like redline Capital as well as existing backers such as Hyde Park Angels, Boldstart, and NEA.
Founded back in August 2015, Catalytic now boasts 60 workers and is located in Chicago.
Chou launched the company using the funds he had got from the sale of his former company, Fieldglass, to SAP for over $1 billion.
Fieldglass assisted with outsourcing, and while developing the company, Chou recognized an increasing problem surrounding the automation of various tedious enterprise processes, especially those that dealt with an organization’s legal systems.
Currently, Catalytic has about 12 clients, including the German-based manufacturing conglomerate Bosch, certification and consulting firm UL, and the Mayo Clinic.
Even though its investors are from the coasts, Catalytic is currently establishing a company, particularly located at the heart of the Midwest, which is a part of the nation that has mostly been sidelined as far as the startup economy is concerned.
Using the $30 million investment, the company can now start increasing the number of workers, including assisting in servicing its big customers, growing its partner network with other software entities and system integrators as well as recruiting additional engineering talent to facilitate the development of the product.
The product is provided as a cloud service on a subscription basis.
 firm Catalytic. Competitors in this area include Automation Anywhere, UiPath & Blue Prism. Read More){kind=link}