WorkJam Secures $50M in Series C Funding

WorkJam, a Montreal, Canada-based digital workplace solutions provider for organizations with frontline employees, closed a $50m USD Series C round funding.

The round was led by Inovia Capital, with participation from Fonds de Solidarité FTQ and Claridge and existing investors Lerer Hippeau, Blumberg Capital, Harmony Partners and WorkJam’s management team. In conjunction with the funding, Inovia Capital’s partners Dennis Kavelman will be joining WorkJam’s board of directors.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to innovate, expand geographically, seek acquisitions, and invest in its employees.

Led by Steven Kramer, CEO and President, WorkJam provides a digital workplace platform for large-enterprise and mid-market companies to communicate across their non-desk workforce, understand and execute tasks, provide them with training, offer schedule self-service and a multi-location open shift marketplace, recognize, and reward employees and more — all through any mobile or desktop device. It is available in over 28 languages and deployed in over 35 countries.

Source, FinSMEs, April 6, 2020

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Evisort Closes $15m Series A Funding

Evisort, a San Mateo, CA-based artificial intelligence-powered contract intelligence system, closed a $15m Series A funding

The round was led by Vertex Ventures and M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, with participation from Amity Ventures and Serra Ventures

The company intends to use the new funds to grow its team, expand product offerings, enhance the customer experience, and launch a new research and development office in Montreal, Quebec. Evisort anticipates hiring 10 technical team members for the Montreal office

Founded in 2016 by Harvard Law and MIT researchers and led by Jerry Ting, CEO and co-founder, Evisort provides a proprietary AI solution that can read and understand the meaning in legal documents like sales contracts and vendor paperwork. The solution allows businesses to automate the work of reviewing, assessing, approving, and tracking any legal documents that define a business action or relationships, such as contracts, statements of work, invoices, purchase orders, and SLA or rebate tables. It reads and visualizes 50 plus key data points, such as payment tables and contract expiration dates, and key legal clauses, allowing teams to focus on strategic decision making versus document processing. The system can also learn to read all types of unstructured documents.

Evisort has secured more than 100 enterprise customers this year, from high-growth startups to some of the largest Fortune 500 companies, including Brooks Brothers, Cox Automotive, Fujitsu, TravelZoo, and Sweetgreen.

Source. FinSMEs, December 19, 2019

                                                       

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Breath Life Raises $4.5M in Funding to Address the Insurance Market

By Isabelle Kirkwood

Montreal insurtech startup Breathe Life, which offers consumer-centric digital solutions for the insurance industry, announced the availability of its ​Consumer-Driven Module​, a white-label B2C solution, that helps carriers and agencies sell direct to consumer online while providing an engaging buying experience.

​A report from Accenture​ estimates the resulting life insurance gap to be around $12 trillion for American middle market customers, with $12 billion in new revenue to be gained by simply serving them. Breathe Life’s Consumer-Driven Module was designed to help the insurance industry bring financial security to millions of customers in the middle market that are currently underserved, since it takes the same amount of effort to write a small policy with small profit margins as it does to write a large policy with large margins.

“The Breathe Life Consumer-Driven Module is designed to do the heavy lifting of targeting qualified prospects, making it easy for them to do business with you online,” said Ian Jeffrey, co-founder and CEO at Breathe Life. “At the same time, the solution keeps agents available throughout the process to help answer questions, add value to the online experience and even close sales at a distance through its omni-channel features.”

He stated that by reducing the cost of customer acquisition, Breathe Life enables the insurance industry to make financial security accessible to more people.

Breathe Life provides life and health insurers, distribution organizations, and advisors with white-label solutions to “quickly and cost-effectively” onboard new clients. It provides clients a way to find life insurance without going to a broker. The ​Consumer-Driven Module​ marks the first product Breathe Life has brought to market since it was founded by ​Arach Tchoupani​, ​Jean-Nicholas Hould​, ​Sébastien Malherbe​, and Ian Jeffrey in January 2018​.

The new module offers a suite of tools, the first being an online application and quoting system for multiple insurance products, the second is a set of omni-channel engagement tools​, and digital marketing insights, including analytics and marketing tools​ that helps providers of all sizes to reach target audiences across multiple channels.

The solution aims to deliver a cost-effective solution for carriers and agencies to digitize and pursue new customer segments, reduce costs with digital acquisition and distribution, and open new market opportunities with custom-branded digital tools.

In February, Breathe Life raised $4.5 million CAD in a seed round of equity funding from ​Diagram Ventures​, ​Real Ventures​ and other angel investors. In December, National Bank Insurance also announced a partnership with Breathe Life to develop direct online life insurance distribution solutions.The company is looking to expand its team, which sat at 20 people in February, to at least 30 by the end of the year.

Source. Betakit, Isabelle Kirkwood,  May 13, 2019

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Heyday.AI Raises $2 Million for AI - Powered Shopping Assistant

By Isabelle Kirkwood

Montreal-based Heyday, a digital shopping assistant and live chat solution, has announced the close of a $2 million oversubscribed seed round led by Innovobot. The financing round also includes investments from Desjardins Capital and several strategic investors with deep marketing and retail expertise.

Founded in 2017, Heyday’s platform combines conversational AI and automation with sales and support teams. It has e-commerce and customer relationship management integrations with Shopify, Lightspeed, and Magento. Client brands include Ford, Lincoln, Decathlon, and food product company Danone. Etienne Mérineau, co-founder and CMO of Heyday told BetaKit the company was bootstrapped by its first 20 employees. The company’s headcount currently sits at 20 full-time team members, and five part-time freelancers.

Heyday said this round will help further its mission to help retailers create seamless shopping experiences across touchpoints, and bridge the divide between physical and digital stores. The company’s goal is ​to usher in a new era of bespoke customer shopping experiences through one on one conversations.

“We’re on a mission to give AI superpowers to CX teams so they can deliver an unparalleled level of service at scale, either via web-based chat or via leading messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google RCS, and Apple Business Chat, to name a few,” said Mérineau.

Part of the financing from this round will also go towards supporting and expanding the company’s engineering, research, and product teams, and to accelerate its global expansion in the United States and continental Europe.

Lead investor Innovobot is an investment and advisory services firm, that has previously invested in Ikkuma, a cloud-based wellness platform, as well as Carbicrete, a Montreal-based company commercializing a technology that enables the production of cement-free, carbon-negative concrete.

“The virtual customer assistant space is booming​,” said Innovobot CEO Mario Venditti. “Heyday is strategically positioned to capture the market thanks to its experienced executive team and the breadth of their conversational AI technology.”

Source. Betakit Isabelle Kirwood, April 25, 2019

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

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