CMC-CIC Innovation Invests in Universign

Universign –French vendor specialising in e-signing processes– just raised €12 million. This funding round was led by historical shareholder CM-CIC Innovation, subsidiary of Crédit Mutuel-CM11, along with Caisse des Dépôts and Odyssée Venture.

This start-up was founded in 2001 to propose timestamping, digital identity management and digital signing solutions. Their non-binding offer and per-use pricing scales contributed to their steady growth: 40% annually over several years.

Universign can now count on more than 3,000 corporate customers and administrations, using their technology to dematerialise digital signing processes. Their SaaS platform has been adopted in 150 countries. They claim 50 million timestamps and more than 10 million digital signing procedures per year. And they propose a mutualised database which includes more than 500,000 digital identities.

This new investment will help them further reach out for European expansion (especially in Benelux, Germany, Italy and Spain). They will also be hiring 120 additional employees by the end of 2019.

Comments – The expanding market of digital signing

Universign expects digital signing solutions to be massively adopted by corporate and administrative organisations. According to a survey conducted in 2017 by Market Research, the global digital signing market is worth more than $900 million, and its assessed growth perspective nearly reaches 30% per year. In France, it was worth €35 million in 2017; despite this slower uptake, it could amount to €45 million in 2018. Universign doesn’t want to miss this profitable opportunity. CM-CIC Innovation already invested in this FinTech and further stresses the trust they place in this company, helping them achieve their goals.

This funding round is a chance for Universign to feed an ecosystem based on partnerships. They are part of the Adobe Approved Trust List, and they want other solutions to integrate with their e-signing service. Eventually, this announcement is a way for them to attract new customers and face up to competition, especially from the US leader DocuSign, and from the Normandy-based start-up Yousign.