Originally published by Tech.eu
JENA, a UK SaaS platform for solopreneurs, announced today it has secured £1.2 million in an oversubscribed Pre-Seed funding round.
The UK alone boasts a staggering 5 million independent professionals, over 400,000 of whom operate in the personal care sector. Most still run their businesses using pen and paper.
JENA enables solopreneurs to run their businesses smoothly instead of piecing together disjointed tools. The company provides them with a full tech stack: a website, AI-powered booking system, payments, CRM, marketing, and e-commerce in one app.
At its core, it is a professional website with a unique URL seamlessly integrated with an advanced booking system and secure payment processing capabilities.
Coming soon is an AI-powered booking agent to automate scheduling, seamless Klarna payment integration, and Tap to Pay functionality, which will replace the need for a card reader.
VC firms True and Gfund led the funding, which also saw the participation of angel investors, including Rob Small (Founder of Miniclip), David Pritchard (Founder of OpenTable Europe), Misha Gopaul (Founder of Fatmap), David Szekely, George Graham (Founder of Wolf & Badger), and the angel collective Ventures Together, among others.
JENA will use the new capital to accelerate product development and customer growth.
According to Jean-Michel Chalayer, Co-Founder and CEO of JENA:
This funding validates our vision and will fuel our efforts to empower more solopreneurs to thrive on their own terms.
We are thrilled to have the support of experienced partners like True and Gfund.
Mike Martin, Director at True, shared:
We’re really excited to back Jean-Michel and Nabil’s vision of bringing vertical software to the independent service industry.
They have already demonstrated clear demand from ‘solopreneurs’ wanting simple and intuitive tools to help manage and grow their businesses, so we’re looking forward to supporting the team as they bring Jena to market.
