Cobee, an HR SaaS platform that manages staff well-being and employee benefits, has announced that they have raised $41.5M (€40M) in a Series B investment. 

The funding was led by Octopus Ventures and Notion Capital. Previous backers Balderton Capital, Speedinvest and Dila Capital also participated in the investment round.

Nick Sando, Principle at Octopus Ventures said, “Increased competition and mobility in the job market have transformed employee benefits from a “nice to have” to a “need to have” talent attraction and retention tool. Cobee stands to play a fundamental role in the employee benefits markets by providing both best-in-class service providers and a core platform for HR teams to manage best and distribute these services.”

The Madrid-based platform was founded in 2019 by Borja Aranguren and Nacho Travesí with the aim to revolutionise the employee benefits sectors. The platform provides HR teams with a compensation tool to reduce administration and paperwork and improves the client company’s employer branding. 

Both employers and employees can access all services on the platform’s dashboard and their mobile phone app, without intermediaries or complications. The benefits are all pulled into one place which staff can then redeem via the Cobee card.

The latest capital will allow Cobee to create new product offerings while further developing its current business in Spain and Portugal as well as expanding in LATAM, especially Mexico.

Borja Aranguren, co-founder and CEO of Cobee said, “For us, it’s very important that investors understand our market and share the vision of what we want to build. Both Octopus and Notion had previously considered other employee benefits startups in Europe, but could not get convinced. However, our vision matched perfectly with their thesis, so it’s been a perfect match. We have an outstanding combination of investment funds in Europe and LATAM, which will unlock the potential in our target markets.”

At an interesting time where HR strategies are focussed on new ways to reward and recognise employees, it would interesting to see how the employee benefit startups like Cobee can accelerate their expansion in the post-pandemic markets.