ZÜRICH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mila AG, the European leader of on demand technical support, announced their pre-Series A round of $2M led by early-stage investment fund Born2Grow Ventures, GmbH and Co. KG. The funding followed Mila’s successful management buyout from Swisscom in October 2020. Current investors, Geneva-based Alpana Ventures and Silicon Valley-based Oriza Ventures also participated in the round. Mila has over 11,000 trained technicians in Germany, Switzerland, the UK, France, and Austria.
“Mila has a clear strategy in terms of opening up international markets,” says Andrea Muth, investment manager of Heilbronn-based Born2Grow Ventures. “Mila has created market entry barriers in the tech support market that are extremely difficult for new providers to open up.”
Born2Grow Ventures boasts a diverse portfolio that has one consistent focus: to find a team and technology whose technology has a well-defined market.
“We experienced over 300 percent growth in Germany and secured over 40 brand partners across Europe in 2021,” says Chris Viatte, CEO and founder of Mila. “This funding will allow us to continue to expand our sales and engineering teams and replicate our solid success in Switzerland across Europe and the UK.”
Mila has offices in Berlin and Zürich, and recently opened its first UK location in London. They continue to serve telco giant Swisscom and have seen growth in services for brands such as Amazon, Otto, BOSCH, and Google and will introduce EV charging station installations in Germany and the UK in Q2.
“We recognized the growth potential for Mila in Germany and the scalability of their business model to expand across Europe and globally,” says Alex Liang, co-founder of Silicon Valley-based Oriza Ventures. “We see our investment as strategically-timed for growth in the UK and other countries where Mila’s professional services are in high demand.”
With the IoT connectivity standard MATTER release date targeted for fall 2022, Mila is poised to be a pivotal player as connected device adoption explodes – bringing with it interoperability issues with existing devices. Through the Mila Academy, trained, vetted Mila Pros allow global brands to offer a third-party agent to install, configure, and ensure their technology is operating, integrated, and performs as designed.
“As an early-stage investment firm, we predicted Mila’s ability to successfully navigate the management buyout and keep growing,” says Pascal Widmer, founding partner of Alpana Ventures. “We are thrilled to see a European VC, like Born2Grow Ventures, investing in Mila and have confidence in Viatte’s leadership ability.”
About Mila
Since 2016 Mila has delivered real-time, vetted, on-demand neighborhood tech support. Mila expanded from Switzerland into new markets through a network of strong retail and enterprise partnerships, offering services in Germany, Austria, France, and the UK. With over 40 enterprise partners, Mila is the European leader of on demand, crowdsourced technical support. For more information, please visit www.mila.com/en-ch.
