Bronze at the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award 2024 goes to Zurich-based fintech startup Yokoy

Yokoy confirms its third position for the second time in a row. The Fintech startup uses artificial intelligence to automate the entire corporate spending and corporate credit card process. Founded in 2019, Yokoy's leadership team includes Philippe Sahli (CEO), Devis Lussi (CTO), Thomas Inhelder (CFO), and Lars Mangelsdorf (CCO). The company helps large corporates to lower costs with intelligent expense management.

For the 14th time, a jury of 100 investors and technology experts has selected the 100 most promising startups in Switzerland. Yokoy is third at the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award 2024. The project idea started in 2019 and today the company employs 250 people and helps corporates to save money as they spend it.

Those who keep an eye on their expenditures sleep more soundly. What applies to private individuals is even more true for large corporations. This is exactly where Yokoy comes in. Founded in 2019, the startup offers comprehensive expense management for medium-sized and large companies. Everything is in real-time, at a glance, automated and with AI support.

Today, the company processes all incoming invoices for more than 500 companies and, according to the renowned tech platform Sifted in the Financial Times, is the second-fastest growing startup in Central Europe – with an average annual growth rate of more than 280% over the last three years.

The Yokoy story began with co-founder Devis Lussi’s annoyance at spending hours filling out expense reports across different countries, currencies, and methods. The result was an app that records, processes, and books expenses in just a few seconds.

Thanks to the support of the in-house developed AI, the expenses app became much more precise and secure than existing products. The image recognition software recorded over 300 data points during the automatic reading of individual receipts, displaying deviations from the norm or potential breaches of compliance rules immediately.

The expenses app was a successful model for Yokoy. “However, we quickly realized that there are many other exciting areas on the accounts payable side,” says Lars Mangelsdorf, co-founder and CCO – such as the ability to link all expenses incurred by a company on an automated platform, including the issuance of company credit cards. According to Mangelsdorf, the latter is a crucial step. Everything in one system, from a single source: “This allows us to go even more directly from expenditure to invoicing.”

Yokoy has managed to reduce the throughput time of incoming invoices and the admin work required to process them by about 90%. The company is particularly successful in Europe, where regulations are high and vary significantly by country: “Dealing with complex situations is one of our strengths: our AI-supported and self-learning system means we can handle companies in different countries with different laws and regulations.”

Yokoy’s customers include Austrian Airlines, Breitling, DeepL, and Stadler Rail. The platform checks and records invoices reclaims VAT, authorizes payments, and verifies all expenses for compliance. Only special cases end up on the finance department’s desk for manual checking. “The automation of routine tasks is very well received by the relevant teams in the companies,” says Mangelsdorf. “It’s also a kind of emotional return on investment.”

Yokoy has grown rapidly in just five years, but “we are still fast, agile, and customer-focused”, says Mangelsdorf. They have no other choice if they want to compete with the big players on the market such as SAP, or even outperform them. “Our goal is very clear: we want to become the market leader for expense management in Europe.” The Yokoy founders have shown that they will not fail due to a lack of ambition or perseverance.



This article by Dominik Hertach was first published in the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Magazine 2024.