Employee app Blink launches with €9.2M funding, aims to connect key workers during COVID-19
in News, (Crowd)funding, Software & SaaS, Startups
Blink, a new smart employee app has been officially launched today. Over the past 15 months, Blink has been developed and deployed in partnership with leading organisations, including Stagecoach, Domino's and the NHS to empower and protect frontline and key workers inside their organisations.
Along with the launch, Blink has also raised £8.2 million (€9.2 million approx.) in capital, led by Paris and San Francisco-based venture capital firm Partech, alongside a roster of high profile Angel Investors. They include Mark Paterson, founding team Orange, General Council. Chairman Swiftkey, FromCounsel, Sparqa Legal. Chairman of Blink, also Hank Vigil – SVP Microsoft, investor in Square, Pinterest, ClassPass, Dopper Labs, Algolia, Onfido, and more.
Blink app: How does it work?
Frontline workers make up 50% of the workforce, but too often they suffer from poor employee satisfaction, high staff turnover & frustrating operational processes. Working across transit, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, construction and facilities management sectors, Blink aims to bring about the Frontline of the Future; decentralised and empowered.
The company, founded by CEO Sean Nolan, designed the app to empower key workers on the frontline. It provides them with a single app to access all important information and systems and the ability to connect with their colleagues.
For the past year, Blink has been partnering with frontline organisations to solve real-life problems for their workers. The first major rollout in January 2019 was for 22,000 employees at transport company Stagecoach.
Employees can access rosters, complete digital forms for leave, absence and accidents, access digital payslips and feedback in real-time to managers on issues and concerns impacting them.
Since then, Blink has been deployed in over 100 organisations in 14 countries including customers such as the NHS and the Prison Service. Two months into the lockdown, Blink had been accessed 25 million times by frontline workers.
The Blink app allows companies to push out information to employees' personal phones, like wellbeing & compliance messages, including COVID-19 updates. Crucially, it supports employees who were previously disconnected from the workplace; it gives them a voice to feedback to managers; it protects them through reducing transference risks from paper by introducing digital forms.
Delivers tangible results for its customers
The startup has been able to double employee engagement rates and the dropped staff turnover by up to 26 per cent. In recognition of their new approach to transforming frontline culture, Blink won three 'Digital Workplace of the Year' awards last year in the USA, UK and Australia, against competition from Microsoft, Google and Facebook.
So far in 2020, the Blink team has doubled in size and opened offices in Sydney and New York. Demand for their service has required a further recruitment drive, with plans to double in size again this summer. April saw the company growing at the fastest pace yet, as companies adopted Blink as part of their COVID-19 response, with the highest growth in the Healthcare and Care Home sectors.
The London-based startup is now opening up the platform so any company can get started immediately with a simple online set-up process via the company website. With a 14 day free trial, 24/7 support, and a 100 day money-back guarantee, companies can connect their entire workforces today.
Sean Nolan, CEO, Blink comments, "The COVID-19 crisis has underlined the critical role that frontline and key workers play in our society. The whole deskless workforce has been starved of investment. Now more than ever they need empowering with better tools so they can effectively perform their essential roles. Every worker needs instant access to the latest information around staying safe, a voice for feeding back to management, and the capability to support their peers on the frontline."
"We started Blink to make it easy to empower workers wherever they are; with information at their fingertips but also have a voice in improving day-to-day operations. We believe if you empower and equip those on the frontline, they are best positioned to make a difference. The organisations that will survive and thrive in the next decade will be those who put their frontline first."
Peter Durkin, Business Development, Blink adds, "Just as Zoom's growth has been bullish amongst desk-based workers in lockdown, Blink has been explosive amongst deskless workers; particularly in the transport, health and care sectors."
Further, Romain Lavault, General Partner, Partech says, "Blink is the digital backbone of companies who run the real world and don't sit behind a computer. Most organisations have realised during this crisis how much they depend on their frontline employees. It's for the millions of essential nurses, bus drivers, construction workers or supply chain operators that run the economy. In just a year, Blink has already been adopted by more than 60,000 enterprise users in the UK, US and Australia who open the Blink app more than 15 times per day on average. This massive adoption is the best tribute to the incredible work done by Sean, Barry and the entire Blink team. We are thrilled to have been supporting them from Day 1 and look forward to the global expansion ahead."
With a portfolio of almost 180 companies spread across 30 countries in Europe, the US, Africa, and Asia, Partech has been one of the leading international investors helping visionary founders for almost 40 years. With over €1.5B under management, Partech invests from €200K to €50M in B2B and B2C technologies reshaping industries. Companies backed by Partech have completed more than 21 IPOs and more than 50 strategic M&A transactions valued over $100M.
— Press release
Main image credits: Blink
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