London-based Coople, an on-demand platform for flexible staffing, has raised an additional funding round of €28.7 million from a group of investors led by One Peak Partners and the Growth Equity Business within the Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division.
Coople has raised €68 million in funding to date, making it one of the world’s best funded companies within the flexible job market. The proceeds from the successful Series C round will be used to continue investing in the automation of Coople’s online platform, to further expand within existing markets, and to launch Coople’s business in the Netherlands and one other international market.
“We look forward to continuing on our path of revolutionising the world of work. On the one hand, Coople offers employees a convenient way to find high-quality, flexible jobs. On the other hand, Coople provides companies with reliable, easy access to our fast-growing pool of on-demand talent,” said Rinaldo Olivari, CEO of Coople.
“Over the past year, we have seen that an increasing number of users are coming to our platform for more than just last-minute jobs. They now rely on Coople for a large part of their income or their core business. We will use the proceeds from this funding round to further improve the automation and user experience of our product, expand our geographic reach, and strengthen our core team with additional talent.”
Since its start in Switzerland in 2009, Coople has introduced its business model in three countries, upending the traditional recruitment industry (which has a global market volume of $470 billion).
The company’s platform uses an algorithm that instantly matches its flexible workforce with the demand from companies. Among other factors, the algorithm takes into consideration a worker’s location, availability, experience and ratings and matches these with the requirements of the hiring company.
The Coople platform provides end-to-end automation of the HR process; from planning, recruiting, on-boarding and hiring to workforce management, payroll and payments. This allows companies to significantly reduce the time and costs associated with HR administration.
By migrating to the AWS cloud this year, Coople has further improved availability, resiliency, and its technical foundations, and is looking forward to scaling in existing and new markets. The company is also extending its world leading flexible staff planning software to enable clients to upload and manage their internal flexible staff.
Today, Coople has over 400,000 registered ‘Cooplers’ (flexible employees) and over 20,000 registered companies on its platform. The company has a market leading position in Switzerland, and continues to show triple digit annual growth rates in the UK, a market it entered in 2016.
Earlier this month Coople announced the appointment of Thijs Dirkzwager, the new managing director for the Netherlands, to launch in the Dutch market. In its existing markets, Coople plans to continue its growth path in the UK and in Switzerland. An increasing number of large blue-chip companies in these markets already rely on Coople for on-demand staffing, including Hilton Hotels, Hyatt Hotels, Financial Times, IWG, Swisscom, C&A, AXA Winterthur, Globus and Moet Hennessy.
“We look forward to our continuing collaboration with Coople, particularly with regard to further international expansion,” said David Klein, managing partner and co-founder of One Peak Partners. “The market for flexible talent remains one of the most exciting technology market opportunities in Europe, and, with its expanded management team, Coople is in prime position to further expand its market leadership.”
To further accelerate its growth, Coople has strengthened its leadership team in 2019. The new members of the senior team are Annette Burgard, Vice President Marketing; Yves Schneuwly, Managing Director Switzerland; Kit Glover, Managing Director UK; and Thijs Dirkzwager, Managing Director Netherlands.