Ravio grabs $12M to disrupt salary benchmarking with real-time compensation data

Compensation is one of the most significant expenses for most companies, often representing over 75% of operating costs. Yet, many businesses still rely on outdated or incomplete salary data, leading to underpayment, pay inequities, and challenges in talent retention. For high-growth companies competing for top talent, guessing salaries based on last year’s data is no longer good enough.
Ravio helps companies identify and address such disparities in real time. Businesses like Just Eat Takeaway, Octopus Energy, and fintech leaders such as Wise, Mollie, and Adyen have already adopted Ravio’s solution. These fast-moving employers need accurate, up-to-the-minute compensation data that reflects today’s dynamic labour market, not figures 12 to 18 months old.
Today, the company raised $12M in a Series A funding round to transform salary management with real-time compensation.Spark Capitalled the raise, which was participated in by Blackbird (Australia) andCherry Ventures(Europe). This funding will support Ravio’s international expansion and product development. The London-based company challenges outdated pay data models using live benchmarking tools and real-timeHR dataintegrations.
Ravio’s founding team includes Co-CEOMerten Wulfert, a former private equity investor turned tech entrepreneur, and Chief Product & Technology Officer Raymond Siems, who brings deep experience in building enterprise software. CPOVaso Parisinou, worked alongside Merten to fix compensation at Deliveroo, then joined Ravio as an early employee. The concept for Ravio was born out of Parisinou’s struggles with outdated data during Deliveroo’s early hyper-growth phase. “We were scaling rapidly, and finding data from relevant companies was painful. I was building bands across countries, ensuring my data reflected the current market, and trying to fill in gaps for remote markets. It was impossible,” she said.
Wulfert, originally from Germany, teamed up with Parisinou in London to build a solution grounded in people operations and analytical rigour. Ravio’s team represents a mix of HR, tech, and product expertise, and the founding story reflects a hands-on understanding of the compensation problem many modern HR leaders face.
Raymond Siems, said, “Without benchmarking, companies operate in the dark. There’s less consistency, less awareness of where change is needed most, and progress can’t be championed or celebrated as effectively.”
Lead investor Spark Capital is known for backing transformational tech companies, including Twitter, Slack, and Oculus. “We’re excited to double down on our previous investment in Ravio by leading their Series A,” said Spark Capital’s Alex Finkelstein. “Getting compensation right is challenging for companies of any size and industry. We believe Ravio is positioned to become the industry standard for real-time compensation data.”
Other backers include Blackbird, one of Australia’s largest and most active VCs, with investments in Canva and Culture Amp, and Cherry Ventures, known for supporting European unicorns such as Flink and Auto1.
Ravio’s platform supports real-time benchmarking across 46+ countries and 100+ roles. Secure API integrations with HR systems source the data and aggregate it anonymously. Customers benefit from tools to run merit cycles, build and manage pay bands, and benchmark salaries, equity, and benefits packages using up-to-date market information.
Companies like HERO Software and Plastometrex have used Ravio to spot pay equity issues and eliminate guesswork from salary decisions. German SaaS firm HERO Software used Ravio to build equitable salary bands as it grew from 100 to 250 employees. “When we built salary bands using Ravio, we could immediately see a few outliers – it was easy to spot pay equity issues,” said Anna-Lena Grimm, HERO’s Director of People & Culture.
Users such as Jodi Slomp, VP People at Mollie, and Evert Kraav, Senior Compensation Manager at Bolt, also praised the ease and accuracy of Ravio’s platform. “Ravio offers real-time data with amazing visualisations,” said Slomp. Kraav added, “Now, we can benchmark against current market rates in real-time.”

“Market data hasn’t kept pace with today’s dynamic market,” said Wulfert. “We’re bringing decades-old survey methodology into the modern age by plugging directly into our customers’ HR systems. This approach automates the data collection process and lets us continuously analyse market movements as they happen.”
This real-time approach gives Ravio a unique advantage over traditional compensation data providers. Its clients have already reported tangible improvements. German SaaS firm HERO Software used Ravio to build equitable salary bands as it grew from 100 to 250 employees. “When we built salary bands using Ravio, we could immediately see a few outliers – it was easy to spot pay equity issues,” said Anna-Lena Grimm, HERO’s Director of People & Culture.
Unlike traditional surveys, Ravio integrates directly with HR systems via secure APIs, ensuring data is always current and anonymised. Beyond benchmarking, Ravio offers tools for running merit cycles, managing pay bands, and even predictive analytics for new hire benchmarking. These features streamline compensation reviews and empower HR leaders to make confident, defensible decisions.
The compensation tech space is heating up, with legacy consultancies (Mercer, AON Radford, Willis Towers Watson) and startups (Figures, Compete) vying for market share. Even established HR tech firms like Lattice are adding benchmarking tools. Ravio’s rapid 400% ARR growth and 1,200+ customers demonstrate its traction in this crowded field.
Following the funding, Ravio plans to scale its dataset across more geographies and industries, and invest in advanced features such as predictive analytics and new hire benchmarking. Siems commented, “We’ve built what our customers told us they need: real-time insights and decision-making tools without painful or time-consuming admin. Our mission is to empower compensation teams to lead with accurate, defensible data in every conversation.”
Ravio now operates on four continents, with recent expansions into India, Australia, and Greece, and deeper coverage in countries like Denmark, Poland, and Portugal. This global dataset helps multinational companies make nuanced, location-specific pay decisions.
As the war for talent intensifies across sectors, the demand for fair, competitive, and data-driven pay strategies is growing fast. Ravio’s focus on live benchmarking and user-friendly tools positions it well to lead the charge in modern compensation infrastructure.
To support its growth and attract new users, Ravio now offers two months of free benchmarking access to companies with more than 100 employees – a timely incentive as more organisations seek data-driven pay strategies.