Cobee, one Europe’s leading employee benefits management digital platforms, has announced today it has raised €14 million in Series A funding led by the leading European venture capital firm Balderton Capital. Invested also joined the round along with previous investors Speedinvest, Target Global, Encomenda and Lanai, as well as angels from Zalando, N26, Uber and Gympass.
Cobee was founded in 2019 by Borja Aranguren, Daniel Olea and Nacho Travesí with the mission to improve employee wellbeing. The flexible and innovative employee benefit management platform brings a wide range of benefits for staff from gyms, to insurance products, perks, and vouchers into one app instead of spread across intranet pages and HR documents. Staff can then redeem these benefits through a Cobee card, allowing them to track the monetary benefit they receive, as well as improving engagement rates and employee satisfaction.
Since the pandemic hit in March 2020, companies have transformed their approach to employee benefit programmes to support staff in this difficult period. Companies have increased spending on healthcare and made greater investment into upskilling their employees and encouraging lifelong learning. Cobee has been well-positioned to help companies making these changes, achieving rapid growth in its home market of Spain as well as Portugal where it expanded earlier this year. The likes of Glovo, Petronas, Avis and Tripadvisor are all now using Cobee to manage employee benefits and improve wellbeing. To satisfy demand from new customers and existing ones, Cobee has doubled its workforce since 2020 and plans to continue to grow the team throughout this year.
With the new Series A funding, Cobee will continue to invest in improving user experience for its customers and their teams. It plans to integrate new benefits with a greater focus on financial products and services, as well as adding more wellbeing perks such as wellness programmes and entertainment platforms. This will allow Cobee to serve even more customers across Europe who are looking for ways to offer bespoke and personalised compensation packages to their employees.
Borja Aranguren, Co-founder and CEO of Cobee, said: “Attracting great talent isn’t just about offering a competitive salary, employees are increasingly interested in workplace benefits too. We’ve built Cobee to provide the best possible experience for employees, giving them more access and control over their compensation and empowering them to use these critical benefits. We’re delighted to have the support of Balderton Capital and will use the funding to continue to invest in our platform and help HR teams across Europe improve staff loyalty and attract the very best talent.”
Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton Capital, said: “Employees are the most important resource for companies today, so ensuring that they are happy and engaged results in higher retention rates. Providing them with a rich, easily accessible and reportable array of benefits that they can use every day is key for anyone looking to acquire and retain great talent. Cobee makes this possible and offers more benefits, in more territories, than any other next-generation platform today.”