From large conglomerates to new companies, they all know that making their employees feel special and happy is crucial. Corporate gifting plays a major role in this and London-based Reachdesk aims to make the process easier. The startup offers a global SaaS platform that is touted to enable companies perform corporate gifting at scale and in an easier manner. The startup has now raised £31.75 million in its series B funding round.
Putting funds to use
The latest funding round for Reachdesk was led by Highland Europe with participation from Highland Capital, HubSpot Ventures, and RLC Ventures. The funding will be utilised for further product development, which includes growing the company’s list of technical integrations, curated marketplace vendors, and global warehouse partnerships. In a conversation with UKTN, the company’s co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Alex Olley reveals more on how the funding will be used in the UK.
“We look to expand our marketing, operations, and commercial teams. We also look to use our position as market leader in the UK to continue to push new use cases for gifting and expand into new verticals and new markets. We expect our team to more than double in the UK, over the next 12 months,” Olley notes.
Laurence Garrett, partner at Highland Europe comments, “Every team member is passionate about making corporate gifting work for everyone involved, and has a unique take on it, one that is set to capitalize on the potential in this space, and become a clear market leader.”
Easier corporate gifting
Reachdesk’s software is said to enable sales, marketing, customer success and HR teams deliver gifts seamlessly. It allows for personalised gifts, corporate merch, gift cards, event invites and welcome packages. The company delivers a curated marketplace that enables deep personalisation, and it is automated as well to cut down on time. Additionally, their SAAS platform connects to a company’s tech stack.
The startup also built a vendor portal that connects directly with their vendors to let users customise a gift with a logo, name, or a handwritten note. As per Olley, this provides for a faster turnaround, better UX and allows the startup to handle increasing scale without interruption. Their customers are notified in real-time once an item has arrived, which eliminates the need to type long codes into a delivery portal’s website.
Accelerated growth and the COVID impact
Reachdesk has reported a notable 600% yoy growth and is apparently on track to grow its business by 4x this year, as per the company’s release. Olley notes, “Since 2020, the firm’s team has grown 500% with plans to more than triple by the end of 2022. We currently have offices in London, New York, and Lisbon and are looking to expand our presence across the US, Australia, New Zealand and APAC later this year.”
In addition, COVID seems to have had a mixed impact on the company. The pandemic caused less spending on events, which helped customers turn to Reachdesk. However, there were budget cuts in many firm’s marketing divisions, which meant overall market spend decreased. With everyone working from home, it was difficult to arrange packing, organising and sending gifts. Reachdesk’s platform provided a solution for this problem.
The startup currently employs 125 people with 40 of them in the US and 60 and 25 in the UK and Portugal respectively. “Our plans are to 3x the team in 2022, growing to over 350. We look to make huge investments in our product and development teams, especially as we continue to mine our data assets, and our GTM teams as we look to significantly expand our footprint across the US, Europe and APAC as well as expand into Latam and the Middle East,” Olley concludes.
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