Cobee, the Spanish start-up revolutionising benefits management, has closed a new €40 million series B round. This operation has been led by the British investment funds Octopus Ventures and Notion Capital, which both specialise in the technology sector and have an interest in companies such as Currency Cloud, Tradeshift, Unbabel, Yulife, GoCardless and Cazoo.

Furthermore, Balderton Capital, Speedinvest and Dila Capital, which have participated in previous rounds, strengthen their investment on the basis of the momentum and confidence they see in the project.

An injection of new capital arrives at Cobee after the company has evolved sustainably and has multiplied its business over three times in just one year due to the improvements introduced in the product. The operation will allow Cobee to further develop its current business in Spain and Portugal as well as expand into new markets. The company starts its internationalisation to LatinAmerica in one of the biggest markets in the region: Mexico.

“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”, states Borja Aranguren, co-founder and CEO of Cobee.

“Increased competition and mobility in the job market has 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 best manage and distribute these services. Representing over $53bn of business spend, the market opportunity for employee benefits is massive and we couldn’t be more excited to support this business on its next phase of growth”, added Nick Sando,  Principle at Octopus Ventures.

“We are thrilled to be joining Cobee in this journey to help employees get the most out of their benefits. What’s unique about Cobee, compared to other players in this space, is their flexible platform, capable of being adapted to different company types and different countries with little friction. At the moment, Cobee is operating in Spain and Portugal and is aiming to launch several additional countries in the next 12 months", added Itxaso del Palacio, partner at Notion.

Founded in 2019 by Borja Aranguren and Nacho Travesí, the company has undergone a significant internal revolution over the last 2 months in order to continue to innovate in the world of employee compensation. The company has fully renewed its employee benefits platform in order to improve its usability and therefore promote its scalability.

The start-up has also improved the app so that everyone can conveniently access their benefits and check their savings quickly and easily. In addition, it has launched the virtual card to be able to carry out transactions from the very first minute without the physical version, thus reducing the use of plastic, among other important changes.

Objective: to achieve international scalability and product diversification

Cobee continues to build the foundations for its launch in other countries, after opening its first office in Portugal in 2021. Aside from committing to international investors in recent months, the company has added different professionals to its management team who have worked in established start-ups in different markets, such as Cabify, Gympass and Binance. The company is now looking at the American and Southern Europe markets in order to expand its employee benefits revolution.

In addition to welcoming all this new talent, the company expects to increase its staff to over 200 people in the next 18 months in order to strengthen its main business areas in different hubs: Madrid, Lisbon, and soon in Mexico and other Southern Europe markets.

Amongst its short-term priorities, the company has identified the complete personalisation of compensation plans through the creation of new services as part of its catalogue. These include products linked to physical and emotional well-being and personal development plans: increasingly growing trends that will improve the perception of the company and improve employees’ quality of life.

Integration with other partners

Similarly, Cobee has integrated in recent months with strategic partners linked to the human resources sector, such as Factorial and Personio. In the medium term, the company will also develop new tactical agreements with both national and international partners in order to fully enhance the scalability of the project.

Cobee develops benefits plans for clients such as Ogilvy, Booking, Workday, N26, JTI, Job & Talent, Avis, Línea Directa, Michelin, Petronas and Glovo, amongst others.