The North East Development Capital Fund (NEDCF) has led a GBP500,000 funding round for Newcastle-based HiveHR Ltd (Hive), an employee listening tool, operating in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) space.
The Fund, which is managed by Maven Capital Partners (Maven), has invested GBP250,000, alongside GBP250,000 from the Future Fund, a government backed scheme supported by the British Business Bank.
The transaction follows an impressive six months of growth with more and more organisations now prioritising how their people are feeling in the midst of significant changes to their ways of working. The funding will be used to accelerate Hive’s roadmap alongside a renewed focus on outbound sales to support its expanding digital presence and online services.
Since the NEDCF’s original investment in HiveHR in April 2019 the business has enjoyed strong growth and has continued to add to its impressive client base, which includes River Island, Hermes, Travelodge, Tarmac, and Northumbria Police. Last year’s investment assisted the business in building out its research and product development function and investing in its sales and marketing activities to grow its customer reach.
Hive is a B2B SaaS proposition playing in the work tech space and provides organisations with a modern and actionable approach to employee voice. The business has a strong management team led by CEO, John Ryder, who has over 15 years’ experience in digital marketing and the technology sector. Ryder was previously Head of Innovation at leading North East eCommerce firm Visualsoft.
The global SaaS and HR Tech market is expanding rapidly with annual double-digit growth fuelled by organisations demanding more cost-effective and flexible cloud-based solutions. Over 28 per cent of global HR enterprise applications are now being delivered on a SaaS platform and is forecasted to increase significantly to 86 per cent by 2022.
David Nixon, Investment Manager at Maven, says: “Despite an incredibly challenging year, the Hive platform continues to provide a key service to more and more organisations as they evolve their remote working operation. Today’s transaction is a further testament to all that Hive has achieved since we originally invested in 2019 and our belief in the future growth of the company. John and his team have created a strong business and we look forward to working with them as they accelerate their development plans.”
Ryder says: “The pandemic has placed the spotlight on some very distinctive issues that elevate the case for Employee Voice further—such as remote and flexible working, wellbeing, inclusion, and culture. So, it’s great that we now have even more resource to continue to grow the business.”
