London-based curated professional development platform Learnerbly has secured $10m in a Series A led by venture capital firm Beringea.
The edtech, whose platform is used by companies including Hellofresh, WeTransfer and GoCardless, said it will use the funds for product development, scaling its distributed workforce of more than 60 employees and to drive US expansion.
The startup’s technology is used by companies to offer learning and development tools to employees – a perk that has become more important as the hiring market has become more competitive for recruiters. It offers employees access to learning materials for jobs ranging from marketing, finance and sales. Its platform contains books, podcasts, courses and coaches from more than 250 providers.
Founded in 2017 by Rajeeb Dey MBE, who is also CEO of Enternships, Learnerbly says its platform is used by thousands of employees in over 100 organisations across more than 50 countries.
Other participants in the funding include new investors Digital Horizon Ventures, BY Venture Partners, GO Ventures and prolific marketplace venture fund FJ Labs, alongside existing investors Frontline Ventures, Triple Point, London Co-Investment Fund and UFI Ventures.
Learnerbly also secured the backing of influential angel investors including Zach Coelius of Coelius Capital; Leonard Picardo, the second employee at Deliveroo; Neil Ryland, the CRO of Peakon, Renaud Visage, the co-founder and CTO of Eventbrite; and Stephan Thoma, former global head of learning at Google.
A $350bn workplace learning industry
According to Statista, the global workplace learning industry is worth over $350bn. Learnerbly says learning has traditionally been delivered top-down but since the pandemic, this has changed as employers look to retain employees during the “great resignation”.
Recent research by Beamery found that 83% of employees think companies should help with career progression, yet 44% don’t currently have access to talent acceleration programmes from their employers.
According to Rajeeb Dey MBE, founder and CEO of Learnerbly, an increasingly competitive hiring market means employers worldwide are concerned about how they recruit and retain top talent.
“Yet, many HR teams struggle to keep up with the breadth of content and pace of change required for L&D in the digital economy,” explained Dey. “Our platform provides employees with the tools to discover exceptional content from more than 250 providers and tailor their own learning plans. This means employers can easily offer access to best-in-class learning without ever needing to create their own content, manage relationships with multiple content providers, or take what we would deem a ‘one-size-fits-none’ approach to L&D.”
Maria Wagner, investment director at Beringea, said: “With the hybrid work environment, employers are under pressure to offer new ways of learning for their employees and ensure they are engaged and retained. Learnerbly offers a curated solution that serves both the needs of the employees and of HR departments in this new environment.”
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