UK-based Israeli HR firm raises $17.5 million: Plans to expand in US and Asia Pacific

Hibob has recently grabbed the limelight with its successful fund raising of $17.5 million in a Series A round.

New and innovative HR startups are rapidly making inroads into the corporate world and are significantly transforming the way organisations manage human resources. Even the venture capitalists are showing great interest in the potential of these HR tech startups. Another interesting startup called Hibob has recently grabbed the limelight with its successful fund raising of $17.5 million in a Series A round.

This investment round was 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. With the recent funding, the total funding of Hibob has reached the $25 million mark.

“Our vision is to transform the way businesses engage with their employees and empower HR to be at the forefront of this fundamental change,” says Ronni Zehavi, co-founder and CEO of Hibob.

Interestingly, within one year of its existence, Hibob has gained the attraction and trust of the capitalists for its cloud-based HR and benefits platform that assists businesses in managing and engaging with their employees. In addition to offering usual day-to-day HR admin tools, the platform  emphasises employee engagement, featuring an unusual bottom-up approach to the formation and support of employee ‘clubs’ or interest groups.

It allows employees to declare and view each other’s interests and start new groups of their own, which are made visible and are then open to more formal support by the business owner or its HR department.

“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,” Zehavi adds.

The company now plans its next phase of growth focussing on strengthening its HR and benefits technology, increasing sales, building strategic partnerships, addressing evolving regulatory requirements, and expanding its operations globally by the end of this year.

According to the company, its current employee numbers stand at 50 people in the UK and Israel. It also claims to have ‘hundreds’ of companies actively using its platform in the UK. With the added funding, the company is now planning to grow to 80 employees and expand its operations to the US, Asia-Pacific, and Israel.

Scott Tobin, general partner at Battery Ventures, says “HR is now a fast-evolving discipline, moving from a compliance-only function to a strategic business role. It needs to be able to consolidate and simplify its administrative responsibilities so that it can be freed up to convert the energy and passion, that young people arrive with, into long-term engagement.”