A few weeks ago we introduced you to hibob as one of 10 UK-based startups to look out for in 2017. Today, the London-based HR and employee benefits startup announced it has closed $17.5 million Series A funding round. The latest round is led by US based Battery Ventures with additional participation from Eight Roads Ventures, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International Limited and Arbor Ventures, as well as Bessemer Venture Partners, who led the company’s seed round of $7.5 Million in June 2016. Today’s Series A announcement, one of the largest of its kind in the UK, and brings hibob’s total funding to $25 million.
Since its UK launch in 2016, hibob has increased its client base to include companies such as Wieden+Kennedy and Receipt Bank amongst hundreds of others serving thousands of employees, it has grown its management team to include veteran entrepreneurs and industry leaders and deepened its technology and operations.
The fresh capital will fuel the next phase of growth that will continue to strengthen hibob’s core HR and Benefits technology, increase sales by helping SMEs streamline their end-to-end HR process, build strategic partnerships with Benefit leaders in the ecosystem, address evolving regulatory requirements and expand its operations globally by the end of 2017.
Ronni Zehavi, Co-founder and CEO of hibob stated: “Our vision is to transform the way businesses engage with their employees and empower HR to be at the forefront of this fundamental change. We see mobile and social media, the growing Millennial workforce and cloud technologies as major forces for this long-needed innovation. We are honored to have raised additional investment from VCs who were part of our seed round and welcome new visionaries on our journey to reshape the way businesses understand and interact with their employees.”
Currently, hibob employs 50 people in the UK and Israel and has hundreds of companies in the UK who are actively using its platform. With the recent announcement of its partnership with one of the UK’s leading pension providers, Aviva, hibob’s solution will be extended to millions of businesses that need to auto-enroll their staff with a pension plan in 2017. hibob plans to grow to 80 employees and expand its operations to the US, Asia-Pacific and Israel in 2017.
Adam Fisher, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners commented: “hibob has rapidly built a world class HR/benefits product for people-oriented companies that demand a flexible HR solution that can adapt to their unique employee base. We are proud to be investors in HiBob from the company’s founding and excited to back them again in the latest financing.”
