LemonEdge secures $2.5m in funding

London-based fintech LemonEdge has raised $2.5 million in a fundraising round led by US venture firm Sidekick Partners, as it eyes growth in North America and Europe.

Investors Tikhon Bernstam, founder of Parse and Scribd, and Lauren Iaslovits, founder of Investran, a private capital markets technology solution, both participated in the funding round.

LemonEdge, formerly LemonTree Software, enables firms in the private equity and financial services industries to digitise complex accounting, using its low-code platform to automate some of the more time-consuming tasks required for shadow accounting, LP specific performance calculations, and fund administration.

The fintech said it will use the proceeds to hire “top talent” for development, implementation, and sales in its London and New York offices.

Gareth Hewitt, co-founder and CEO of LemonEdge, said: “We are pleased to have completed a highly successful funding round, and to have the support of such well-renowned investors.

“For more than 20 years, I’ve seen an astonishing amount of financial data inside legacy applications or spreadsheets that do not communicate and that are insecure. LemonEdge’s low-code platform delivers the next generation of private equity performance and accounting software, without dependence on workarounds.”

Iaslovits sold Investran to Sungard in 2004 and is currently special advisor to CEPRES, a platform for private market investment professionals, said: “LemonEdge brings a complete no- and low-code solution to the challenges of general ledger accounting for the private capital market.

“The ability to simulate scenarios without risking reporting data is fundamentally empowering, and I can see clear benefit to fund administrators in terms of cost and time saving in the enterprise data space. This is the natural evolution of private capital technology, driven by a dynamic team.”

Bernstam, who founded technology companies Scribd (private) and Parse, which he sold to Facebook for $85 million, added that the ability to rapidly deploy off-the-shelf solutions, and to empower a 10 times reduction in development time, “will open up this hugely under-served segment in the same way that low-code platforms empowered the mobile software boom”.