Freelancer marketplace Malt acquires consulting counterpart Comatch

Independent management consulting network Comatch has been acquired by freelance community Malt. The deal stands to build the largest client network for freelance professionals in Europe.

Founded in 2014 by McKinsey & Company alumni Christoph Hardt and Jan Schächtele, Comatch is a European marketplace for independent management consultants and industry experts.

The firm’s unique vetting process has helped secure the organisation assure quality for customers, while its matchmaking process has seen it supply independent consultants with projects in markets worldwide.

With demand for its network of freelancers having boomed further following the pandemic, the curated collection of consultants now includes over 15,000 professionals, in more than 120 countries – while Comatch directly employs 130 people in its Berlin, Paris and London offices.

Now, as it enters a new chapter, the firm’s growth and market positioning has attracted investment from Malt.

Comatch Managing Director Christoph Hardt noted, "Malt is Europe's leading marketplace especially for digital freelance talents while Comatch is the largest European consulting marketplace. We believe in a future where technology and consulting continue to grow closer together, which is why we are very excited to jointly build Europe's leading marketplace where organisations can find the best independent professionals for any possible project."

Home to a community of 320,000 freelancers, Malt is the largest network of its kind in Europe. The deal extends Malt’s community of skilled professionals into a new market – that of business consultants – as it looks to reach a €1 billion business volume by 2024 in a freelancing market valued at €355 billion.

United over a shared vision of the future of work, in which professionals are empowered to choose how and whom they work with, Malt and Comatch will now focus their efforts on market-facing synergies to broaden the offerings for their clients and their community of highly-skilled freelancers.

The combined company’s extended services will cover eleven regions and countries, including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Middle East and North Africa, the Netherlands, Nordics, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

At the same time, the two companies have worked with clients which make up 80% of the CAC-40 and DAX-40 companies, and together will build the largest European client network for freelancers, with more than 1,000 enterprises. To support all this, the company will look to hire 150 new employees – bringing their total headcount to 600 staff by the end of the year.

Malt CEO Vincent Huguet – who co-founded the firm with Hugo Lassiège in 2013 – commented, “Comatch is a champion in the field of business consulting marketplaces. As a fellow company that shares Malt’s “community first” approach, placing our talents at the core of the product and business to our vision for the future of work, we are eager and excited to bring our two worlds of high-skilled freelancers together.”