Press article: "Ingels backs entrepreneur aiming to shake up the audit world"

[Translation of the newspaper article from De Tijd. Read the original article here.]

As a company auditor, Natalia Khamraeva repeatedly ran into rigid work processes. Through her start-up Auditstage, she wants to use AI to tackle those frustrations. She now gains the support of seasoned investor Jürgen Ingels in that mission.

“It may surprise you, because many people find it boring. But being an auditor is truly my dream job.” Natalia Khamraeva says it with a broad grin. “You get a front-row view of how companies operate and sometimes have to work under real pressure. And you serve the public interest. We determine whether a company is trustworthy or not. I am very proud to have been able to do that for almost fifteen years.”

Yet Khamraeva is also frustrated with the job she is so passionate about. Over her years in the audit industry, her annoyance grew at the heavy administrative burden and the repetitive, often manual work that overshadow the rewarding aspects of the job. “After a while, I felt that the value I could offer was being held back too much,” she says. “So last year I quit my job.”

She did not do this to leave the audit industry behind. Quite the opposite. Khamraeva is on a mission to make the profession attractive again. Through her start-up Auditstage, she is building software to automate the tedious, repetitive parts of the job, allowing auditors to refocus on what matters. “Audit is a complex process that requires a lot of specific knowledge,” she says. “That is why no good solution exists yet. But recent advances in AI finally make it possible.”

“I have a lot of experience with large companies where every year an army of auditors comes in to crunch the numbers. And the following year the same people show up again to do roughly the same thing.”

Jürgen Ingels, founder of Smartfin

Investment round

To fund her mission, Khamraeva is raising 750,000 euros from Smartfin, the investment fund of seasoned fintech entrepreneur Jürgen Ingels. He says he had long been thinking about similar ideas regarding the audit industry. “I have a lot of experience with large companies where every year an army of auditors comes in to crunch the numbers. And the following year the same people show up again to do roughly the same thing. There is enormous efficiency to be gained in that process.”

Ingels sees it as the next wave of software automation. “With Clear2Pay we tackled payments. Then came accountancy, where we helped Silverfin grow into a leader. I strongly believe we can do the same with Auditstage. Normally we invest in companies with more maturity. But sometimes we want to help build from the beginning again, as we did with Silverfin and Guardsquare.”

“After moving to Belgium at age eleven, I learned that if I wanted something, I would have to make it happen myself. I still carry that mentality with me.”

Natalia Khamraeva, founder of Auditstage

The question is whether the major firms, the so-called Big Four, will not immediately crush such a small player. “It is true that those firms have the resources and people to build their own solutions,” Khamraeva says. “But they mostly keep that software for themselves. They do not put it on the market. Under that top layer, there is a whole segment of mid-sized firms that do not have the means to build what we will offer them. Those companies, which mostly audit SMEs, are our target customers.” The aim is to release a first version of the software on 1 September and to commercialize broadly from 2026.

Russian immigrant

For Khamraeva, giving up her job to take the leap into entrepreneurship was anything but obvious. “If it had been up to me alone, I would probably still be in a slowly rusting golden cage. I often talked about my ideas, but actually acting on them. That only happened because my family, which includes many entrepreneurs, kept telling me to take the leap. Eventually, I did.”

Khamraeva learned early on to stand her ground. “I was born in Moscow and moved to Belgium in 1999 at age eleven. That was not easy. Immigration and globalisation were less straightforward then than they are today. During that period, I learned that if I wanted something, I would have to make it happen myself. I still carry that mentality.”

That is also what appealed to Ingels, he says. “It is not an absolute requirement, but in my experience the best entrepreneurs carry an inner frustration, a drive to prove themselves. I see that in Natalia. I think we can go far together.”