Digital workplace pioneer seeks to disrupt $12B market for frontline team performance solutions
YOOBIC, the all-in-one digital workplace for frontline teams, today announced closing a $50M Series C funding round led by Highland Europe, a growth-stage investment firm that backs software and consumer technology companies with sizable revenue growth and proven market adoption. Existing investors Felix Capital, Insight Partners, and a single family office advised by BNF Capital Limited also participated in the round.
With $80M in total fundraising since inception, YOOBIC’s industry-leading all-in-one digital workplace is the first full-service software platform designed for frontline teams. Its scalable and user-friendly app gives retail associates, restaurant staff, fieldworkers, and all types of frontline employees a single centralized mobile hub to support their daily task management, deliver digital training, and enable seamless communication with peers, supervisors, and HQ.
That’s a gamechanger for the world’s 2.7 billion deskless workers, who currently make up 80% of the global workforce. Despite making invaluable contributions during the pandemic, frontline workers remain underserved, with only 1% of IT spending currently targeting deskless employees. Tech enablement for frontline workers is more important than ever in the post-pandemic environment, as businesses resume in-person operations and scale up to support the reopening economy, while navigating the compounding challenges of staffing shortages and post-COVID financial pressures. To overcome such challenges, businesses need to ensure consistent and efficient execution, streamlined communication, and improved training and upskilling for their essential frontline employees.
YOOBIC is already helping more than 300 top brands across 80 countries to give frontline workers the digital support they need to succeed at over 335,000 locations spanning retail, hospitality, distribution, manufacturing, and more. Operations, HR, and L&D leaders at iconic companies including Boots, Carrefour, Lancôme, Lacoste, Logitech, Lidl, Peloton, Puma, Vans, VF Corp, and Sanofi all rely on YOOBIC to drive operational efficiency, achieve network-wide performance consistency, and upskill their frontline workforce.
YOOBIC closed out Q1 2021 by signing new high-profile clients including Untuckit, Roots, Canada Goose, Longchamp, Lidl, Zadig & Voltaire, and Athletico — a sign of the growing need for frontline worker enablement. Overall, YOOBIC’s platform has seen a 200% increase in activities conducted natively in the app in the last 12 months, everything from chats and videos to digital task completion and virtual training lessons. In March 2021, YOOBIC reached the milestone of 1 million activities per month on the platform.
- “Thanks to YOOBIC, we have real-time visibility into what’s happening in our stores. Before, it would sometimes take us months to recognize we had a problem, but with YOOBIC we can see it very quickly.” Andrew Armstrong, Field VP of Sales at cosmetics brand Lancôme, which uses YOOBIC to power 2,100 point-of-sale locations.
- “With YOOBIC’s mobile platform, we are creating more efficient operational capabilities that engage and empower employees, giving them the tools they need to deliver best-in-class service.” Skip Bourdo, COO of Athletico, a physical therapy leader with 540 locations.
- “We needed a tool capable of meeting our need for agility, to retrieve information quickly. Mobile phones are an essential tool for accompanying customers on the shop floor, for understanding the product and for training. The average age of our teams is 28, they spend on average four hours per day on their smartphone, so we needed to design solutions that fit to their expectations.” Livio Tabbi, Retail Director Europe of The Kooples, a French fashion retailer with 330 stores.
The Series C round will support YOOBIC’s continuing growth, including a 75% increase in headcount to bring the company’s global workforce to 350 by 2022, with a focus on bringing on tech, sales, customer success and marketing talents. As YOOBIC continues to consolidate its market leadership in EMEA and accelerating growth in North America, the investment will also turbocharge the company’s R&D efforts, particularly in data intelligence and predictive insights, and enable them to develop services for frontline employees in sectors such as manufacturing, warehousing, and transportation.
“We’re excited to partner with YOOBIC, which, thanks to the highly impressive team led by Fabrice, Avi and Gilles, has clearly established itself as a leader in the digital workplace space with demonstrable market traction and impressive growth.” said Jean Tardy-Joubert, Partner at Highland Europe, who will be joining the YOOBIC Board. “While companies have historically focused on digital investments for deskbound employees, the world is becoming distributed and decentralized. We anticipate a seismic shift that will see huge resources, technology, and capital shifted toward frontline teams.”
“YOOBIC’s mission is to shape the future of work for the deskless workforce,” said Fabrice Haiat, CEO and co-founder of YOOBIC. “They are essential to business success: they are the brand ambassadors of their organization, and are responsible to keep or break the company mission. This funding will consolidate YOOBIC’s position as a global market leader for frontline teams, helping brands to ensure all their employees feel connected, fulfilled, and valued to become the leaders of tomorrow.”
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