Fintech scale-up Pleo, which offers simplified expense and bill management automation tools, and smart company Mastercards, has appointed Arun Mani as its Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).
Joining from FreshWorks Europe, Mani brings with him 8+ years of experience leading and growing successful start-up businesses. As President at FreshWorks Europe, he was responsible for launching the EMEA business, building a team of 150+ people from scratch. Prior to this, Mani oversaw sales at AppNexus, helping to scale the business from ~$20m to over $200m in just four years. An Engineer by background, Arun also holds an MBA from INSEAD.
As CRO, Mani will be helping to support Pleo’s growth in the coming years, overseeing all revenue-facing operations across sales, customer experience, marketing and partnerships across Pleo’s seven markets - in the UK & Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Spain. He joins Pleo at a crucial point in its growth journey as it prepares for a $100m Series C funding round this summer.
With Pleo previously valued at USD ~$236m after raising USD $56m in its Series B funding round in 2019, Jeppe Rindom, Pleo CEO & Co-founder also claims Pleo's value to currently stand at USD ~$734m and expects the business to reach unicorn status imminently.
Jeppe Rindom, Co-founder and CEO of Pleo, says:
“We are delighted to welcome Arun to the executive leadership team and he will play a crucial role in guiding Pleo’s growth over the coming months. Arun brings invaluable experience to Pleo, most recently from building the Freshworks organisation in Europe and prior to that, heading sales in the Americas for AppNexus - two impressive, international, multi-unicorn software businesses. Arun intimately understands what it takes to scale a business across Europe, and with his expertise I am confident that Pleo is well on its way to reaching unicorn status imminently.”
Arun Mani, Chief Revenue Officer of Pleo, says:
“Pleo is at a great inflection point, and is riding the wave of digitisation in the business spend management market. There is a strong market need and product fit for a solution like Pleo, and I’m excited to further expand its proposition to become the go-to solution for businesses everywhere. In my role, I’ll have a personal goal of ensuring that Pleo has 1 million engaged users by the end of 2025, which is a 25 times increase from now until the end of 2025. With the rate that Pleo’s customer-base is growing, and the engagement it has built so far - I’m confident that this goal will become a reality.”
Today, over 16,000 businesses are using Pleo across its seven markets of operation - in the UK & Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Spain. Pleo was also recently named as Global Startup of the Year 2021, and is listed by GP Bullhound as having an 84% chance to reach unicorn status within two-three years.