Katana raises $11 million funding for ERP software targeting manufacturers

Katana, an enterprise resource planning (ERP), has raised $11 million in a Series A round of funding led by Atomico. The platform is aimed at the manufacturing industry. According to the estimates, the global ERP market was pegged as a $43 billion industry in 2020, a figure that could rise to $60 billion within five years.

ERP software is a suite of integrated applications that organizations use to manage processes across a business, spanning accounting, HR, inventory and order management, customer relationship management (CRM), and more. For manufacturers, ERP software can bridge all these various components, help them identify bottlenecks, and ultimately improve their efficiency.

Founded in Estonia in 2017, Katana positions itself as the “manufacturing entrepreneur’s secret weapon,” one that is seeking local power production for smaller businesses. Lately, there has been a growing micro-manufacturing trend over the past decade, where smaller local manufacturers are selling direct-to-consumer (D2C) thanks in part to the proliferation of ecommerce tools and cloud computing.

Katana seeks to serve the market with a plug-and-play ERP platform that integrates with tools and marketplaces such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Magento, WooCommerce, Xero, and QuickBooks to improve productivity and material inventory control.

“We are seeing a global renaissance of small manufacturing driven by the rise of ecommerce tools and consumer demand for bespoke products produced locally. Just walk around any big city from London to San Francisco, and you’ll see workshops all around you. This is a massive boom of makers wanting to create products and sell them globally. It is not a trend that will disappear tomorrow,” said Katana CEO and cofounder KristjanVilosius.