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French startup PayFit has raised a $107 million series D funding round (€90 million). Eurazeo Growth and Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund are leading today’s round. Existing investors Accel, Frst and Xavier Niel are participating once again.
PayFit has been building a payroll and HR software-as-a-service platform. It lets you manage your payroll from a web browser and automate as many steps as possible. For instance, you can configure automate payslip generation, export your payroll data to your accounting software and get a list of payments you need to make when it comes to pensions, health insurance, etc.
Given that it’s a software-as-a-service platform, everything remains up to date. For instance, if there are some regulatory changes that require some adjustments, PayFit can update its platform so that you remain compliant from day one without having to think about it.
Over time, the startup has expanded beyond payroll to tackle a bigger chunk of the HR stack. Each employee gets its own PayFit login to access their payslips. But the company doesn’t stop there as you can request time off and enter how much time you’ve worked this week if you’re paid on an hourly basis. PayFit automatically notifies the manager for approval.
PayFit can also become your central repository for expenses and receipts. The company already has everyone’s bank information, which makes it easier to transfer money back to an employee for a cash expense.
Employees can also view the company’s directory and management chain from PayFit. The HR department can set up an onboarding flow in PayFit so that employees can request a computer, a badge, and enter personal information as soon as they join the company.
If you work for a big company that uses something like Workday, all of this probably sounds familiar. But PayFit targets small and medium companies that don’t want to sign expensive contracts with enterprise companies. It has attracted 5,000 clients that employ 100,000 employees overall — that’s an average of 20 employees per company. Some of the biggest clients include Revolut, Starling Bank and Treatwell.
The company is currently live in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the U.K. It currently has 550 employees and it plans to hire another 250 employees in 2021 to support its growth.
Capdesk, an equity management platform, has raised a £5m Series A extension led by Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and MiddleGame Ventures. This followed a first raise of £3 million in 2020, led by Fuel Ventures, and brings the Series A total to £8 million, and total funding raised to £11.7m.
Capdesk’s clients include startups such as Gousto, Secret Escapes, Privitar, Voi Technology and Billie.
The platform allows founders, employees and investors to digitize their equity, options, and warrants transactions. This gives shareholders access to a private secondaries market via a partnership with the Seedrs crowd-equity platform.
Capdesk now wants to build a ‘seed to post-IPO’ equity platform, for this normally underserved European sector by onboarding established private and publicly listed companies.
Christian Gabriel, CEO and Co-Founder, Capdesk said in a statement: “Today’s announcement makes Capdesk the best-funded equity management solution in Europe. More importantly, it combines the fintech expertise and capital support from MiddleGame Ventures and Fidelity, paving the way for Capdesk to build an equity solution never before seen in Europe.”
Zoom, Microsoft and Google all rocketed to the top of the charts in the virtual meetings stakes during the pandemic but a plucky startup from Norway had others ideas. Video meeting startup Whereby has now raised $12 million from German VC Point Nine, SaaStr fund and a group of more than 20 angel investors.
Angels investors include Josh Buckley(CEO, Producthunt), Shakil Khan (Founding Member, Spotify), Elizabeth Yin (Hustlefund) and Jason M. Lemkin (founder of Saastr).
Øyvind Reed, CEO at Whereby said in a statement: “The past year has led many of us to question the future of work, with video meetings set to remain a big part of our lives. More than ever, the tools we use to connect have to enable effective and enjoyable meetings, providing focus, collaboration and wellbeing. .”
Whereby’s platform has three pricing plans (including free) and allows users to embed tools like Google Docs, Trello and Miro directly in their meetings, unlike other video platforms.
Whereby was demonstrated to me by co-founder Ingrid Ødegaard on a coffee table during 2016’s Oslo Innovation Week. I immediately set-up my username, which has existed even as the startup changed it name from Appear.in. Ingrid told me during an interview that they “tried to be much more human-centric and really focus on some of the human problems that come with collaborating remotely. One of the big mistakes that a lot of people making is just replicating the behavior that they had in the office… whereas we think that you actually need to work in a fundamentally different way. We want to help people do that and by making it really easy to jump in and have a meeting when you need to. But our goal is not to push people to have more meetings, quite the opposite.”
The startup’s secret weapon is enterprise integrations. If you had a video meeting with a UK GP over video in the last year it was probably over Whereby (indeed, mine was!). Whereby won a contract with the NHS for its remote video patient consultations during the pandemic. Competitors for this include Jitsi and AccurX. The company claims it saw a 450% increase in users across 150 countries last year.
“Last year we saw the mass adoption of video meetings,” said Christoph Janz, Partner at Point Nine. “Now it’s about taking the user experience to the next level and Whereby will be leading that charge. It’s amazing to see a Scandinavian startup playing in the same league as the tech giants.”
Uber said Tuesday that drivers in the UK who use its ride-hailing app will be treated as workers, a designation that will give them some benefits such as holiday pay. However, even as Uber seemingly concedes to a Supreme Court ruling last month, a new fight could already be brewing over the company’s decision to calculate working time from the point a trip commences — rather than when drivers log on to the app.
Uber said that beginning Wednesday all drivers in the UK will be paid holiday time based on 12.07% of their earnings, which will be paid out every two weeks. Drivers will also be paid at least the minimum wage (called the National Living Wage) after accepting a trip request and after expenses, Uber said in a statement. Eligible drivers in the UK will automatically be enrolled into a pension plan with contributions from Uber. These contributions will represent approximately 3% of a driver’s earnings.
In the UK, there are three designations: self-employed, employed and worker. The “workers” designation doesn’t make them employees, but it is still entitles them to the minimum wage, holiday pay, and, if eligible, a pension.
Uber said Tuesday that based on current expectations, the company is not changing its previously announced expectations for Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter or for 2021.
Uber has been entangled in fight over worker classification in the UK since 2016. Last month, the UK’s Supreme Court dismissed Uber’s appeal, which reaffirmed earlier rulings that drivers using the app are workers and not independent contractors. With no place to turn, Uber has conceded — sort of. Uber will only guarantee that drivers’ working time and other benefits will accrue once they accept a trip and not based on when they have signed into the app to begin working. That already has labor activists fuming.
“While we welcome Uber’s decision to finally commit to paying minimum wage, holiday pay and pensions we observe that they have arrived to the table with this offer a day late and a dollar short, literally,” according to a statement from the App Drivers & Couriers Union and signed by James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, the two drivers who brought a case against Uber. “The Supreme Court ruled that drivers are to be recognized as workers with entitlements to the minimum wage and holiday pay to accrue on working time from log on to log off whereas Uber is committing only to these entitlements to accrue from time of trip acceptance to drop off. This means that Uber drivers will be still short-changed to the tune of 40-50%. Also, it is not acceptable for Uber to unilaterally decide the driver expense base in calculating minimum wage. This must be subject to collective agreement.
While Uber undoubtedly has made progress here, we cannot accept anything less than full compliance with legal minimums. We would also expect to see Uber make progress towards trade union recognition, a fair dismissals appeals process and a data access agreement.”
Farrar told TechCrunch that the issue has not been resolved. The next step will be to go back to the Employment Tribunal to ensure that drivers are paid what they are legally entitled to,
Even as Uber deals with continued labor issues in the UK, the company will likely turn much of its attention to cases are still playing out in courts in other European countries — decisions which could put pressure on Uber’s bottom line. Meanwhile, EU lawmakers are also consulting on how to improve conditions for gig workers so Uber’s concession in the UK is likely feed into pan-EU negotiations.
