Berlin-based Zenjob gets €27 million to take its student job site international

Today the digital staffing service, Zenjob, has successfully secured a Series C funding round of €27 million. The lead investor in this round was Forestay Capital, who is joined by Redalpine, Acton Capital, Axa Venture Partners and Atlantic Labs.

Zenjob was founded in 2015 by Fritz Trott, Cihan Aksakal and Frederik Fahning, and has since become a team of 250 people. Their main goal is to act as a digital staffing service that provides temporary work to students, as well as helping companies on the other side find employees. Using the Zenjob app, students can find and book jobs on an hourly basis and can flexibly decide when, where and for whom they work. Each month, more than 15,000 students are employed in sectors such as logistics, events, retail and catering. 

Currently, the startup’s services are deployed and used in 14 German Cities. The new funds raised will primarily be used to support their expansion across more cities in Germany, as well as subsequently expand internationally. As well as this geographic expansion, the new funding will be used to develop the technology behind the service, using algorithms to further predict staff demand in the future.

Fritz Trott, co-founder and CEO of Zenjob comments: “We continue to invest further in our technology and expansion. Soon, more companies across Germany and Europe will be able to book staff by the hour and with fewer than 24 hours’ notice. The same applies to employees, particularly students, who also benefit from the flexibility and ease-of-use that Zenjob’s technology provides. Instead of paperwork and unnecessary interviews, a student goes directly to the right job with the help of the app. The coronavirus crisis requires social distancing, which has created increased demand for staffing in, especially, logistics and retail. Our service means that we can assist in the almost effortless digital hiring of hundreds of new students every day to fill these gaps.”

Forestay Capital’s Managing Partner, Frederic Wohlwend, said: “We are delighted to have invested in Zenjob and are very much looking forward to working with Fritz and his highly talented team. Zenjob is a company that has deployed disruptive technology to shake-up the temporary employment market and which, prior to this coronavirus crisis, had already proven itself to have an exciting future. Now, during this pandemic, its flexible digital recruiting service has, in our eyes, further been confirmed as a model for keeping the working world moving.”

“It’s great to see Zenjob going from strength to strength since the early days. We strongly believe in Zenjob’s unique digital offering in the temp staffing market. The team has built a very powerful platform to match high-quality temp staff with businesses, quickly and flexibly across all industries. This financing round is an important milestone for the company to further strengthen its market position in Germany and expand internationally,” adds Harald Nieder, Partner at Redalpine.

Source. EU Startups, Charlotte Tucker, May 12, 2020

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Choco Raises $30.2M in Funding

Choco, a Berlin, Germany-based company focused on simplifying how restaurants order from suppliers, raised $30.2m in funding.

The round was led by Coatue Management with participation from previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Atlantic Labs, Target Global and Greyhound. In conjunction with the funding, Coatue Chairman Dan Rose, a 20-year industry veteran and former senior leader at Facebook, will join Choco’s board of directors, along with Coatue Partner Bennett Siegel.

The company, which has raised a total of $71.5m since 2018, intends to use the funds to expand into new markets and scale its team to 200 employees by the end of the year.

Founded by serial tech entrepreneurs Daniel Khachab, Julian Hammer and Rogerio da Silva Yokomizo, Choco is launching a direct-to-consumer program to link increased consumer demand for groceries delivered to homes, with the excess supply of restaurant-quality, locally-sourced produce from wholesale food suppliers. The company will provide next-day delivery to buyers, with increased sustainability measures as products are sold fresh, locally and with less packaging.

Choco is rolling out this program in all 17 of its global markets (in eight countries that include Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Brazil and the United States), with dedicated direct-to-consumer e-commerce websites set up for suppliers and consumers in each market. The company combines mobile e-commerce tools with a chat app platform to enable restaurant managers and food suppliers to digitally migrate their supply chain operations.

Additionally, as part of this initiative Choco will donate 100% of profits, until restaurants reopen, to regional funds to help local restaurants stay afloat.

Source, FinSMEs, April 17, 2020

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Amboss, the knowledge platform for medical professionals, scores €30M Series B

Amboss, the Berlin-based “medtech” startup that originally offered a learning app for students but has since pivoted to a knowledge platform for medical professionals, has raised €30 million in Series B funding.

The round is led by Partech’s growth fund, with Target Global acting as a co-investor. Existing investors Cherry Ventures, Wellington Partners and Holtzbrinck Digital, also participated.

Launched in 2014 as a study platform for medical students, Amboss has since evolved to offer what it claims is the “most comprehensive and technologically-advanced” knowledge platform for medical professionals. It has been developed by a group of 70 doctors and 40 software engineers who work together in small cross-functional teams.

“Medical Knowledge does not find its way into practice efficiently,” argues Amboss co-CEO Benedikt Hochkirchen. “This has two main root causes: the way we educate doctors is outdated, and the way doctors access knowledge is inefficient.”

Specifically, he says that medical students are still taught to memorize facts, which become outdated quickly, and there isn’t enough emphasis on understanding and application. In contract, Amboss’ “smart learning” technology claims to not only help students achieve higher scores in their medical exams but furthers their contextual understanding and therefore lays the foundation “to be better prepared for clinical practice.”

“In clinical practice, doctors would adapt 50% of their decisions if they had the latest and precise knowledge at hand,” says Hochkirchen. “In real life on the wards, doctors lack the time to research and find the relevant knowledge. For them, Amboss’ smart guidance app is there to provide instant, convenient and reliable medical knowledge to carry out the best possible care.”

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The end result, says the Amboss co-CEO, is that the startup’s app reduces the average research time needed for doctors to make a clinical decision from 30 minutes to 30 seconds. Crucially, its knowledge base contains the most recent medical facts and guidelines “in every single case.”

“Young doctors have to take over a lot of responsibility early in their career,” adds Hochkirchen. “Career starters are regularly the first touch point with a doctor when a patient enters a hospital. Often young doctors do not feel properly prepared for the real-life challenges in those situations. Amboss is the source of choice to master those decisions, e.g. with emergency algorithms and lead symptoms.”

Likewise, more experienced and specialised doctors can also find utility in Amboss, as guidelines and therapies of choice are constantly changing. “It is almost impossible for the doctor to stay up to date for every possible indication,” he says. “Amboss provides them with precise knowledge based on latest guidelines to ensure doctors choose the best therapy possible.”

Or, put a another way, Amboss is attempting to build a “Google for medicine.” “They are tackling a very exciting space which will have a positive impact on society, bringing knowledge levels and skillsets of medical doctors to a higher level,” Cherry Ventures’ Christian Meermann tells me.

Meanwhile, armed with new capital, Amboss says it will accelerate the global rollout of its product with a focus on the U.S. In addition, the startup will further develop its product, for both generalist and specialist doctors, “to help improve their daily clinical decision-making.”

Source. TechCrunch, Steve O'Hear,  September 30, 2019

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German Challenger Bank N26 Nets $170M In Series D Extension

Today, Berlin-based mobile banking upstart N26 announced that it raised an additional $170 million, extending its Series D round.

This transaction values the venture at approximately $3.5 billion, post-money, up markedly from the $2.7 billion post-money valuation N26 achieved following the first tranche of its Series D round—a $300 million deal Crunchbase News covered when news broke back in January.

News reports and Crunchbase data suggest this was an inside round, with existing investors contributing to the top-up transaction. These include the likes of Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures, the corporate venture arm of German insurance giant Allianz, Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent, and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, among others.

The capital contracted in this deal brings the company’s total funding to over $680 million in combined USD and Euro-denominated VC backing.

Since the company’s last round there’s been talk of expansion beyond N26’s beachhead markets in Europe. Last week, the company formally announced its launch in the United States. According to the company’s statement, “N26 is the first European challenger banking platform to launch in the US.”

Europe is home to a number of banking upstarts—like Atom Bank, Monzo, Revolut, and others—seeking to unseat incumbents by offering slick branding and a more full-featured banking experience mediated through mobile phones. London-based Monzo launched a “light version” of its app in the U.S. back in June, though a more feature-complete rollout is slated for later this summer.

In its U.S. launch announcement, N26 said it first opened an office in New York City back in autumn 2017, when the company had approximately 500,000 customers. Last month, the company announced it now serves 3.5 million customers worldwide. In addition to its Berlin headquarters, the company maintains offices in New York, São Paulo, Barcelona, and Vienna, collectively employing 1,300 people. N26 said it will use the new funding to continue expanding toward the goal of becoming “a global bank.”

Source. Crunchbase, Jason Rowly, July 18, 2019

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