Draper Esprit (AIM: GROW, ESM: GRW), the leading public European venture capital firm, today announces that it has significantly increased its equity stake in Perkbox, investing a further $8.6 million.
Draper Esprit first invested in Perkbox in 2016 alongside the equity crowdfunding platform, Seedrs, and, including the follow-on investment, has now invested over $12.0 million.
Founded in 2015, Perkbox is the digital employee engagement platform that launched in 2015. They have also developed a “Perkbox for customers”, a white-label platform which helps businesses acquire, connect with and retain loyal businesses. Forbes recently ranked Perkbox as one of Britain’s top 5 startups while they were ranked no.3 in the startups 100 index of the most innovative and fastest growing startups in the UK. The startup has doubled year on year and now has over 165 employees, having opened a new office in Sheffield last February.
The investment in Perkbox will enable the company to access untapped demand in the market as it supports a growing number of diverse clients from SMEs to large corporates. As the battle to access and retain employees and customers gets ever harder, Perkbox empower companies (small and large) to retain and motivate employees. The company has grown significantly and counts Holland and Barrett, AXA, Le Pain Quotidien, Deliveroo, Worldpay, BlaBlaCar among many of its customers and is now looking to expand internationally.
Simon Cook, CEO Draper Esprit commented: “Perkbox has shown further hyper growth since we invested last year and we believe the team are well on the way to becoming the market leader with both amazing product innovation and huge customer engagement. Our model is predicated on following our capital to work over the long term and to actively support our leading companies. Employee engagement is increasingly essential and Perkbox’s platform provides an innovative solution to increase workplace happiness and improve productivity.”
Saurav Chopra, CEO and co-Founder of Perkbox, said: “We are exceptionally happy to have Draper Esprit as a significant investor in Perkbox. We believe they understand and agree with our mission to create a better society through building stronger relationships with employees and customers, and we continuously benefit from their insight and assistance in building a global scalable business in our defined end user markets.”