Yousign Adds Canyon to Expand Into Document Automation

France-based digital signature platform Yousign on Friday (Jan. 21) acquired document and workflow automation company Canyon in a deal that expands its reach and comes seven months after Yousign raised 30 million euros (more than $34 million) in a Series A fundraising round.

Canyon and Yousign had already worked together and their platforms had integrated with each other, so the acquisition takes the pairing to the next level, according to a Silicon Canals report. As part of the acquisition, Yousign will fully integrate Canyon with the Yousign platform.

Canyon, which was founded in 2020 by Adrien van den Branden and Thomas Vanderstraeten in Belgium, has 1,000 employees worldwide. The company works primarily with small and medium-sized companies (SMBs) and is used by firms including Aircall, Spendesk and Le Wagon, the report says.

Canyon uses a no-code solution that customers can set up on their own to speed up legal and administrative processes. Yousign’s acquisition means it can now meet the needs of a business from the start to end of the administrative process.

“Acquiring Canyon will strengthen our position as a market leader by propelling the company into a new dimension,” Yousign COO and M&A Head Alban Sayag said in the report. “We want to cover the entire document automation value chain and additional acquisitions could very well be on the cards in the near future.”

Yousign, the French eSignature solution founded by Luc Pallavidino and Antoine Louiset in 2013, offers a secure contract automation platform to its more than 8,000 customers across the SMB landscape and more than 3 million monthly signers in France, Germany, Italy and Poland.

The company is targeting a goal of 50,000 European SMBs using its eSignature platform by 2024 and is looking to hit at least 70 million euros (almost $80 million) in annual recurring revenue, with the Canyon deal serving as a springboard toward that goal.

“Today SMBs spend too much time doing mundane admin and legal work that could be automated. We can’t wait to help Yousign’s 8,000+ customers save countless hours in their document processes through automation,” Canyon CEO and Co-founder Adrien van den Branden said in the report.

The document automation market is valued at 20 billion euros ($22.7 billion) in Europe.

Related: As DocuSign Falls 40%, Reports of the Death of Digital Documents Are Greatly Exaggerated

In December, fellow eSignature platform DocuSign announced it will also be increasing investment in global sales capacity, training and field enablement to drive new business and expansion within its existing 1.1 million customer base. The company will also invest in product innovation in 2022.