Swiss tech startup Beekeeper secures $45 million Series B funding to provide secure communication for mobile workforce

We live in a mobile world. Employees in many industries are now on the go. Organizations are faced with the challenge of securing communication between these employees. Today, more than 1.7 billion non-desk workers are globally unconnected or poorly connected by a patchwork of consumer and enterprise applications.

Enter Beekeeper, a tech startup and the creator of the first operational communications platform for non-desk workforces. Beekeeper’s solution integrates multiple channels in one secure hub that is accessible by employers and employees from both desktop and mobile devices to produce a more productive and efficient workforce.

Today, Beekeeper announced it has closed $45 million Series B financing to accelerate its platform adoption. The round was co-led by Thayer Ventures and Swisscanto Invest by Zürcher Kantonalbank, with participation from prior investors including Atomico, Alpana Ventures, Edenred Capital Partners, Fyrfly, Hammer Team, investiere, HighSage Ventures, Keen Venture Partners, Samsung NEXT, Swiss Post, and Swisscom.

Founded in 2012 by Cristian Grossmann (Ph.D. in Engineering), Flavio Pfaffhauser (MSc in Computer Science), Daniel Sztutwojner (MSc in Mathematics) and Andreas Slotosch (M.A. in Business & Technology) four friends with a passion for connecting people through technology. The Zürich, Switzerland-based Beekeeper provides a digital workplace app that digitizes the non-desk workforce by connecting operational systems and communication channels. Beekeeper is a mobile-first communication platform that reaches every shift, location, and language through real-time messaging and targeted streams.

Beekeeper is designed for organizations with more than 50% of its workforce who are not otherwise connected on email or company devices – including Hyatt Hotels, Dollar General, Domino’s Pizza and SeaBoard Foods. Client companies on the platform have realized significant savings and efficiencies on labor within months of activation. Now with customers in more than 160 countries, the company completed a $5 Million Seed Round, an $8 million Series A financing, supplemented by a $13 million Series A extension round last year.

Commenting on the funding, Beekeeper’s Co-Founder and CEO, Dr. Cristian Grossmann, said, “Given the pace of workplace digitization and the unique demands of frontline workers, businesses have struggled to find a mobile-first platform built specifically to meet the complexities of a non-desk workforce. Consumer apps are not the answer, and knowledge-worker apps such as those offered by Slack and Microsoft don’t cover the needs of frontline workers. Beekeeper provides a purpose-built one-stop platform to help organizations streamline business processes and collaboration with their frontline employees across shifts, locations, and languages. We are grateful to Thayer Ventures, Swisscanto Invest and our other investors for fueling Beekeeper’s continued exponential growth – to benefit operational efficiencies, employees, and companies across the globe.”

While desktop tools get adoption rates of 15% among non-desk workers, the Beekeeper platform boasts an industry-leading 90% activation rate, creating a uniquely valuable enterprise tool that hosts the majority of day-to-day workflows for many of its customers.

“Digital transformation of the enterprise has become mission-critical for suppliers, especially in the hospitality and travel ecosystem. Although the tendrils of this transformation have largely reached management and other desk-based workers, the non-desk worker has mostly been left behind. Closing the gap is more complicated than one might think given the fluid nature of the workforce, security challenges, legacy systems and need to mitigate complexity. Beekeeper has solved the problem and has deployed as the leading platform for non-desk-worker operational communications and engagement. In addition to the enterprise-grade quality of the technology, Beekeeper continues to achieve extraordinary adoption statistics which, at the end of the day, is the most important factor,” Christopher R. Hemmeter, Managing Director at Thayer Ventures, said.