Behind PURO’s growth story – from dormant to profitable growth

Taloussanomat recently reported on PURO's tremendous growth story from being dormant to one of Finland's largest fintech start-ups. Not in vain, in our third year of operation we achieved a profitable turnover of 2m EUR! Indeed, start-ups are the group of the fastest growing companies in the field of Finnish financial technology, or fintech companies, therefore strong growth is no exception for companies in this field.

PURO's story began at the end of 2017 with the goal of creating a company that bases its operations not only on strong banking expertise but also on state-of-the-art technology. Although our core business factoring financing is not a new invention, we strive to modernize the market by making flexible and easy-to-use financing solutions available to allp regardless of company size or age. In the development of our technology, we have relied on experts in the field of the gaming industry, which has created a solid foundation for our company to grow into the fastest and most flexible provider of financing solutions. Thanks to our integrated technology, we can help companies at all stages of the invoicing lifecycle, from invoicing, financing and collection to accounting, through our extensive partner network.

What makes PURO’s story exceptional is that our growth, like with most other growth companies, has not been boosted by venture capitalists. Instead of private equity investors, PURO’s growth is based on partner and angel investors, and through partnerships, we will continue our profitable growth in the future as well. The most significant single investor with a 25 percent holding in PURO’s business is Accountor Group, one of Finland's first emerging players in the industry. Our common Vision is to create world-class invoice financing and invoice lifecycle services. Cooperation with Accountor Group's subsidiary Accountor Finago and our common offering Procountor Kassaturva has been a significant factor in PURO’s growth story. With Procountor Kassaturva our goal is to bring PURO's exceptional service and technology available to all businesses in Finland and soon also abroad.

A significant factor behind our growth is also the commitment of our staff to the company. When asked about what makes PURO unique, PURO's Sales Director Niklas Sohlberg, who solves our customers’ problems on a daily basis, praises that it is what we do together as a team. The good team spirit in the company is reflected all the way to the customers:     

"An excellent team spirit and work atmosphere combined with a state-of-the-art technological solution sets us apart from the competition. Working together is also facilitated by the fact that the majority of employees are also shareholders in the company."

Frankly, our employees have become PURO's largest group of shareholders, which is a sign of our employees' strong belief in PURO's values, vision and growth goals. Every PURO employee is committed to doing their best every day to provide the best possible service to our customers. 

Anne Torkkeli (Sales Director), who has been in the industry and present in customers’ daily lives for more than 38 years, emphasizes PUROs' genuine desire to help customers.

"Our thought-world is such that we want to support the growth of our customers instead of just selling."

When asked about what factors are behind PURO’s growth story, our CEO Junno Roine points up one thing:

"Everything we do is based on satisfied customers. Even if we offered technology with all the latest developments, without our customers we would not be at the point we are today. For us, customer satisfaction is everything and we want to provide a service that covers all their needs, not just in terms of financing, but covering the entire invoice life cycle all the way to accounting - and with unprecedented user-friendliness of course!"

PURO will continue to seek growth in the future, and one of the means of growth is to offer our technology beyond end customers as a Finance as a Service business. PURO's integrable technology enables our factoring solution to be added to for example to a bank’s service offering, and to any existing software system through easy and fast integration. We are currently looking for new partners to make use of PURO's white-label technology to offer factoring service under the partners’ own brand.