Aleph leads $5 million seed round in smart procurement platform Approve

Israeli venture capital firm Aleph announced Thursday that it is leading a $5 million seed round in Israel-based procurement management platform Approve. Several angel investors also participated in the round, including the founders of leading technology companies like IronSource, Sisence, Alooma, Fundbox, and CloudEndure.

Approve was founded in 2019 by Bar Winkler, Shlomy Amsalem, and Amit Mittelman and currently employs 20 people in Tel Aviv and San Francisco. The company developed technology that provides full support for the enterprise procurement process, from the initial purchase request to the final payment to the supplier. The product allows finance and purchasing departments to manage and monitor the procurement process automatically in order to shorten the time invested in the process and produce savings in purchasing costs.

Prior to founding Approve, Winkler, the company’s CEO ran a B2B merchandising management platform. “Within two short years, we grew the business to $2 million in sales with over 200 enterprise customers. Throughout that journey, I saw first hand the struggle legacy ERP solutions created. A market in dire need of a cultural shift, we set out to build a seamless, SaaS-based platform that would use smart automation to ensure transparency, collaboration, and efficiency, all while helping to scale enterprise companies and put them firmly on the path towards digital transformation,” he said.

“The legacy enterprise resource planning ecosystem and existing enterprise procurement solutions suffer from fragmented tooling, broken communication, and siloed data. This results in lengthy processes laden with unnecessary errors, and missed saving opportunities,” Wrinkler said. “Whereas, Approve reduces the buying cycle by 50 percent, cuts supply costs by 10 percent, and lowers processing costs by upwards of 60 percent.”