Covalo Raises €3.5M for Personal Care Data Infrastructure

Zurich-based Covalo has successfully closed a €3.5 million Seed extension, positioning itself as the essential data infrastructure for the global personal care sector. This significant funding round, led by Hi inov with crucial participation from existing backers HTGF and seed+speed Ventures, will fuel Covalo's strategic pivot from an ingredient discovery marketplace to a unified data backbone. The company marks its fifth anniversary alongside this funding announcement, underscoring its established presence and future ambitions.

The personal care industry grapples with immense data fragmentation, a challenge Covalo aims to solve. A single product, like a facial cream, can involve dozens of raw materials, each requiring extensive documentation covering safety, regulatory compliance, sustainability, and technical specifications. Currently, this information is scattered across disparate systems, formats, and suppliers, leading to inefficiencies. Covalo's platform is designed to centralize this data, enabling R&D, regulatory, and procurement teams to access and utilize it seamlessly.

“The industry desperately needs a shared system of record where ingredient data is structured once and reused across all functions,” stated Timo von Bargen, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Covalo. “Our largest clients are expanding their usage dramatically year-over-year, not due to aggressive sales, but because once data is organized on our platform, teams across R&D, regulatory, and procurement all recognize its value. This compounding effect is something isolated tools cannot replicate.”

This funding arrives at a critical juncture for the personal care market, which faces increasing regulatory pressures. Initiatives like the EU Green Deal, microplastic bans, and packaging reforms are expected to necessitate reformulation for approximately 80% of products by 2030. This surge in complexity and volume of ingredient data highlights the urgent need for a robust, standardized data solution like Covalo. The company's platform directly integrates with suppliers' Product Information Management (PIM) systems and brands' R&D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) workflows, replacing inefficient manual processes involving emails, PDFs, and spreadsheets.

The implications for product development timelines and success rates are substantial. “On average, it takes 3-5 years to bring a product to market, with a staggering 50% of launches failing, costing the industry hundreds of billions annually,” explained Yann Chilvers, Co-founder and Co-CEO. “Much of this inefficiency stems from how product data, which flows through the entire lifecycle, is managed. Covalo is building the industry’s common data backbone to enable seamless data flows, crucial in today’s environment of constant supply chain disruption, sustainability demands, and rapidly shifting consumer preferences.”

Covalo currently connects over 1,500 ingredient suppliers with more than 6,000 brands across 145+ countries. By providing a secure, neutral platform, it facilitates faster innovation and more sustainable product development. The ability for suppliers to update compliance certificates instantly, with all relevant brands receiving immediate notifications, exemplifies the platform's power to streamline operations and mitigate risks in a highly dynamic market.