Ukrainian tech startup AirSlate received a $50 million loan from U.S. Silicon Valley Bank bringing its total funding to $130 million, according to startup’s chief executive Boris Shakhnovich.
AirSlate has developed a tech that helps international businesses work with electronic documents, which they can sign, edit, analyze and arrange digitally. It seems a timely innovation during the pandemic when many enterprises opt to work online.
With the investments from Silicon Valley Bank, the startup will improve its product, hire new staff and expand to new markets.
“We are excited to support breakout companies like AirSlate through their next phase of growth,” said Nicole Hawkey, vice president of Silicon Valley Bank’s technology banking team.
AirSlate received money from Silicon Valley Bank in debt financing, meaning the bank won’t have any share in the startup, as in equity financing.
Apart from AirSlate, Silicon Valley Bank has also invested in other tech firms, including home security firm Ring owned by Amazon and popular job search website ZipRecruiter.
Shakhnovich said that AirSlate deserved the support of such a big investor because the startup is innovative and grows by nearly 50% every year. “We built a great company that serves hundreds of thousands of customers — from small enterprises to those listed in Fortunate 500,” he told the Kyiv Post.
During the pandemic, AirSlate’s business grew even quicker, so by the end of the year, the company hopes to reach $100 million in revenue, Shakhnovich said.
Over 40 million users across the world use the company’s tech. The Australian government, big insurance agencies like U.S. Transition Insurance Agency, construction company Tutor Perini and commercial real estate services company Colliers are among AirSlate’s clients.
As for now, the company’s biggest market is the United States, followed by Europe. AirSlate doesn’t have clients in Ukraine because there is no “widespread need” for electronic signatures or business automation in the country, Shakhnovich said. “People in Ukraine don’t seem to be interested in the product that we sell,” he said.
Although AirSlate doesn’t operate in Ukraine, it has one of its five offices in Kyiv. AirSlate is one of Ukraine’s most funded startups, according to tech analysts CB Insights.
Earlier in January, AirSlate also attracted $40 million from U.S. private investment companies Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, General Catalyst and HighSage Ventures.
Shakhnovich told the Kyiv Post that AirSlate wasn’t actively looking for investors, who usually offer to invest in the startup themselves. Investors believe that the technology the startup develops is currently in high demand around the globe, the startup’s chief executive said.
Costumers seem to be satisfied with AirSlate’s product too.
“(With AirSlate’s tech), all paperwork and signature gathering has become a breeze… There is no longer a need to print, mail, retype,” said Sam Ginzberg, chief information officer at Royal Care, the company that provides home care services to seniors and disabled people in New York.
Anthony Matero from T2 Biosystems, a company that develops diagnostic products to improve patients’ health, also praised the startup. He said that “the automation built into AirSlate helped us remove many manual steps in our old process.”
Shakhnovich told the Kyiv Post that there are many companies in the field that work on a similar issue as AirSlate, including U.S. tech giants Adobe and Microsoft. But his team of 700 people is ready to compete.
“We believe that AirSlate is well-positioned to become a global leader in the business process automation, e-signature and document management markets,” Shakhnovich said.
AirSlate was founded in Ukraine in 2008 by tech entrepreneur Vadim Yasinovsky under another brand name, PDF Filler. The company has been based in the United States since 2011. At first, the company has a Ukrainian office based in the city of Donetsk, some 750 kilometers southeast of the capital. But since the beginning of the war with Russia in 2014, the company moved to Kyiv. Now AirSlate is a global company with offices in the U.S., the Philippines, Ukraine and Canada.
