NEW YORK — March 30, 2016 — Planday, the workforce management platform for shift-based businesses, today announces that it has raised a $14 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by new investors Idinvest, and also included Creandum, the lead investor in Planday’s Series A round, SEB Private Equity, and angel investor Arthur Kosten, co-founder of Booking.com.
In 2014, Planday raised a $3.75 million Series A round, and in 2015 received a further investment from angel investor Klaus Nyengaard. Since then, Planday has grown 100% year-over-year to over 100,000 end-users in 24 different countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
Planday will use the Series B funds to expand further into the US, strengthen its leadership in the European market, and develop integrations with other technologies that support shift-based businesses, including payroll providers, find and hire services, and Epos technologies.
Guillaume Durao, Investment Director at Idinvest Partners commented, “Right now the workforce management space consists of tools that are either too simple with only a few features, or overly complex systems that are difficult to roll out. After a thorough analysis of the global market, we’ve found Planday to be a uniquely feature-rich SaaS solution that is specifically built to address the complex needs of a mid-sized business and easy to use for both employees and managers.”
According to Johan Brenner, Investment Partner at Creandum, “From the beginning, we’ve seen huge potential in Planday because many shift-based businesses – such as restaurants, hotels and fitness chains – use complex manual processes or spreadsheets to manage their employees’ shifts. Planday’s system gives the employees responsibility and power to manage time, and releases managers from tedious administrative work. Planday has the best product and a world class team to dominate this sector.”
Since its launch, Planday has built a mobile-driven SaaS product, and has one of the largest mobile development teams in the industry. By working with technologies that employees and managers already use, Planday has delivered a product that is intuitive enough to fully engage the whole organisation and flexible enough scale across multiple industries and country-specific workforce rules.
Planday has many U.S. customers in the hospitality and retail industries, including Best Western, Fitness World, Anderson’s Custard, and a number of boutique restaurants, including Ellary’s Greens in New York.
“Before using Planday, we had two challenges: one was tracking shift changes among the team, and the other was having a clear, concise picture of the schedule that we could easily manipulate. Planday has saved Ellary’s Greens countless hours in scheduling and logistical communications. Our employees love using Planday, because they get more clarity around the schedule, and the autonomy and independence that allows them to exchange shifts,” said Leith Hill, Founder and President at Ellary’s Greens.
Planday has already seen their mobile strategy pay off in the use of their mobile app, which averages multiple logins per user, per day.
“With a smartphone in everyone’s pockets, there’s a huge opportunity to create connections between employees and businesses that didn’t exist before. We want to help businesses move away from cumbersome, manual processes and into ways of working that make the interaction between hourly employees and their workplaces real-time and collaborative. That shift will fundamentally change the way employees find work and the way businesses operate,” said Christian Broendum, CEO at Planday.
“We want to be a driving force in an emerging ecosystem that enables and empowers part-time workers. We will use this funding to partner with other key market players, including find and hire services, Epos, and accounting and payroll providers,” said Broendum.
Planday has grown into a team of more than 80 people in five international offices, and with this investment plans to grow rapidly in all their locations. Learn more about the product at planday.com
About Planday:
Shift-based businesses are faced with the fact that managers and employees often don’t work the same hours, making communication and planning difficult. Planday changes that dynamic by connecting shift-based businesses and hourly workers when, how, and where it’s needed.
Planday fundamentally restructures the workplace by creating a real-time platform where businesses and employees can collaborate using transparent shift planning, easy communication, streamlined HR processes, and online & mobile time clocking. Planday also supports managers in mid-sized businesses by providing granular reporting and payroll integrations. By creating a transparent, real-time platform, Planday enables businesses and employees to work together in a way that suits everyone.
In 2014, Planday received investment from Creandum, and in 2015, they received another investment from former global Just-Eat CEO, Klaus Nyengaard. In 2016, Planday received a $14 million series B investment led by Idinvest, Creandum, SEB Private Equity, and Angel Investor Arthur Kosten.
About Idinvest:
With more than €6 billion under management, Idinvest Partners is a leading pan-European private equity firm focused on the middle-market segment. Idinvest Partners has developed several complementary areas of expertise including Venture Capital, Growth Capital and Private Debt investments in unlisted European companies as well as Primary and Secondary investments in European private equity funds. Founded under the name AGF Private Equity in 1997, Idinvest Partners was formerly part of Allianz until 2010 when it joined forces with IDI as an independent firm.
About Creandum:
Creandum is a leading European venture capital investor, focusing on innovative and fast-growing technology companies within consumer, software and hardware industries. The Creandum funds have over €400M under management and are advised by the Creandum Advisory companies with offices in Stockholm and Palo Alto. Creandum funds have over the last decade invested in more than 50 companies including Spotify, Tictail, iZettle, and Vivino. For more information, please visit www.creandum.com.
