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Beekeeper raises additional USD13m in Series A funding

Beekeeper, a communication and operations platform for frontline workers, has raised an additional USD13 million as a part of its Series A extension round.

Atomico and Keen Venture Partners led the round with a diverse group of strategic investors including Samsung NEXT, Edenred Capital Partners (ECP), and Swiss Post who have joined Beekeeper’s mission to connect the nearly two billion non-desk workers who have been forgotten when it comes to digitalisation within companies. All existing key investors, including FYRFLY Venture Partners and investiere.ch, also participated in the round.
 
Aligning employees without email addresses or corporate devices with the entire organisation in a centralised, secure environment is a major challenge. Seventy-five per cent of the workforce currently use their personal mobile devices to communicate with co-workers, and the lack of proper operational communication tools has forced employees to use consumer-based workarounds such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Data privacy scandals by consumer giant Facebook and the launch of GDPR has emphasised the importance of data privacy and security.
 
Built from the ground up for secure, centralised operational communication on mobile and desktop devices, Beekeeper plans to deploy its latest round of capital by continuing to invest in market growth, innovation, and its information security management system to maintain their ISO 27001:2013 certification. This will ensure the platform delivers a simple and elegant experience for frontline workers while maintaining the highest security levels.
 
“Atomico is proud to support Beekeeper as their employee communication and operations platform, built specifically for the world’s two billion non-desk workers, and continues to succeed on a global scale,” says Ben Blume, Principal at Atomico. “Over the last few years we’ve watched Cris, Flavio, and the team build not only a world-class product and culture, but consistently win some of the world’s most well-recognised corporations as clients across a range of industries from hospitality and manufacturing to retail and construction. It is testament to our belief that big enterprise SaaS winners will continue to emerge from Europe.”
 
“Digital B2B innovations tend to be knowledge-worker centric,” says Robert Verwaayen, general partner at Keen Ventures. “CIOs and HR professionals are waking up to the fact that skill-driven employees can also benefit from tech enablement with a mobile UI that fits their job realities. This also drives much greater inclusiveness around their organisations; Beekeeper plays right into the heart of the digital workplace trend. We believe that Beekeeper is on a path to become an indispensable collaboration tool for the 80 per cent of the global workforce that has been largely forgotten by digital technology. The market opportunity, strength of the product, and the talent of the team gives Beekeeper a real shot at becoming a meaningful giant in the mobile enterprise space.”
 
This round of capital will also be dedicated to the next evolution of Beekeeper’s Marketplace and plug-in ecosystem. As the central employee touchpoint, Beekeeper has the unique ability to streamline internal communications and operational tools within one intuitive app that desk and non-desk workers can access in real time from their mobile phone. Through Beekeeper’s integrations and out-of-the-box apps, corporations can consolidate operational tools and communications into a simplified employee experience – something that will be imperative as frontline workers are introduced to corporate technology, many for the first time.
 
Christina Bechhold Russ, Principal at Samsung NEXT Ventures, says: “Non-desk based workers are one of the most overlooked markets for digital services, yet they are estimated to have a mobile penetration rate of 84 per cent and this only continues to grow. Beekeeper enables employers with distributed workforces – from manufacturing companies to retailers – to seamlessly connect everyone in the organisation and transform the way information is dis-seminated and shared. A strategic investment for NEXT, this is a great opportunity to support a fast-growing scale-up leveraging mobile devices to define the future of work.”
 
Edenred Capital Partners (ECP) views Beekeeper as the leader of the digital workplace revolution. “Collaboration tools and monitoring operational communication in a secure environment is a crucial pain point that corporations are looking to solve,” says Norbert Furnion, partner of ECP. “Our investment team has been impressed by the progress Cris and his team have made in digitizing difficult-to-reach non-desk workers and are convinced of Beekeeper’s ability to successfully deploy their platform globally, an important element that we look for when investing.”

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