Fonoa raises $25 million to expand its global tax automation platform

Fonoa, the API-first global tax automation provider for the internet economy, has raised $25 million to expand its global tax solutions. Investors in the round include Index Ventures, OMERS Ventures, FJ Labs, Moving Capital, Gautam Gupta (former COO and CFO at Opendoor and Uber), Kevin Hartz (founder at Eventbrite), Prabir Adarkar (CFO at Doordash), Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas (former COO at GoCardless), Allison Barr Allen (COO at Fast) and others.

Adapting to global tax changes

While technology is driving trade at an ever-increasing pace, it has become harder for digital-first businesses to understand and manage global tax and compliance obligations. Today, automation options are limited and manual processes remain the norm - forcing companies with cross-border transactions to rely on costly and complex solutions to manage their international tax footprint.

Fonoa is transforming how digital companies including marketplaces, digital service providers, micromobility operators, gig economy platforms and subscription-based companies stay tax compliant; converting a costly and complex process into an automatic and seamless one. The company provides a plug-and-play modular platform that helps businesses determine and calculate the right amount of tax, in the right place, at the right time. This is done by providing a simple API solution that integrates into the workflow of its customers to help handle the full chain of tax reporting. Fonoa’s platform verifies the tax status of the buyer and seller, calculates the correct tax to charge and creates a locally compliant invoice after a transaction takes place. Moreover, it allows for automatically reporting transactions in real-time to a country’s government where needed.

By removing manual work through automation for businesses in the internet economy, Fonoa is enabling companies such as Lime, GoStudent, Teachable, Uber and Zoom to expand their global offerings and stay tax compliant.

A one-stop solution for global digital businesses

Fonoa was founded by three Uber alumni - Davor Tremac, Filip Sturman, Ivan Ivankovic - who experienced first hand how difficult it is to correctly calculate and report taxes to authorities throughout the world. With no suitable software solutions on the market, they decided to use this experience to automate taxes for the entire internet economy.

Fonoa currently supports tax automation transactions across 100+ countries today and aims to expand this to over 140 countries by the end of the year. To help facilitate this, the company has raised $25 million in funding. Fonoa plans to use the funding for growth including international expansion and hiring across all areas of the business. Though the company is headquartered in Dublin, Fonoa has a remote-first approach to business with a distributed team across 14 countries and plans to hire more staff across the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America in the coming months.

Davor Tremac, CEO and founder of Fonoa, said: “In the digital world, businesses and customers transact on a global scale. Country borders are no longer a limiting factor, and technology drives global trade at an ever-increasing speed. Combined with the increased scrutiny by regulators, dealing with tax matters in a more automated and trusted way has become an ever-more pressing issue. We built a one-stop solution that handles the complexities of tax globally, allowing digital businesses to focus on growing their core business.”

Hannah Seal, Principal at Index Ventures, said: “The Fonoa team has identified and solved a genuine problem for businesses, with a product that enables businesses to manage their tax obligations seamlessly through one API. There's a whole category of modern payment solutions which have become the norm, but the innovation and caliber of software solutions around tax have been nowhere near the same standard. Fonoa plans to change all of that.”

Jambu Palaniappan, Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures, said: “Budding entrepreneurs can use hundreds of different platforms to scale their business and accept payments from anywhere, but when it comes to paying the right taxes across different markets, the support is non-existent. The Fonoa team has built a brilliant platform that solves this problem elegantly, providing a streamlined solution to enable businesses to operate and grow across the world.”

Global VAT lead at Zoom: "Fonoa’s solutions have helped Zoom with expanding our global marketplace offerings by assisting with tax determination, invoicing and tax compliance."

About Fonoa:

Fonoa helps high-volume internet marketplaces and merchants automate taxes across the globe. Businesses selling software, content, goods, or services online use Fonoa to automate their sales tax, VAT and GST obligations around the world. It reduces their cost of operations, increases compliance and improves profitability. Fonoa integrates with existing data and provides an easy-to-use dashboard. Clients don’t have to spend endless hours on manual and repetitive work. Developers need only a couple of minutes to understand how Fonoa’s API works. www.fonoa.com