Learnerbly, SaaS Marketplace for L&D, Secures $ 10 Million Series A Led by Beringea – TechCrunch
It was in 2017 that I covered the emergence and first funding of Learnerbly, a SaaS professional development marketplace. A lot has happened since then, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic, which pretty much meant that all kinds of learning had to go virtual, including within companies.
The British startup has now secured a $ 10 million Series A funding round led by Beringea. New investors Digital Horizon Ventures, BY Venture Partners, GO Ventures and FJ Labs also attended. This was alongside existing investors Frontline Ventures, Triple Point, London Co-Investment Fund and UFI Ventures.
Learnerbly has also secured angel investors including Zach Coelius (Coelius Capital), Leonard Picardo (second employee at Deliveroo), Neil Ryland (CRO of Peakon), Renaud Visage (co-founder and CTO of Eventbrite) and Stephan Thoma (former Global Head of Learning at Google). So far, it has secured clients such as Hellofresh, King, WeTransfer, Curve, Busuu, and GoCardless.
Learnerbly’s Online Marketplace offers access to books, podcasts, lectures, courses, coaching and more from over 250 vendors including Blinkist, Masterclass, Pluralsight, and General Assembly and is aimed at engineers, marketing, finance and sales specialists, etc.
Founder Rajeeb Dey MBE was previously best known for Scaling Internships – a portal connecting students and graduates with internships at fast-growing start-ups and companies.
He commented, “With the rise of ‘big resignations’ and employers around the world concerned about how they retain and attract top talent in an increasingly competitive market, the emphasis on learning and development. development has never been greater. Businesses are struggling to navigate the new norm of hybrid and remote working, and facilitating the personal and professional growth of employees has become even trickier. “
Maria Wagner, Director of Investments at Beringea, commented: “With the hybrid work environment, employers are under pressure to offer new ways of learning to their employees and to ensure that they are engaged and retained… Learnerbly offers an organized solution that meets the needs of both employees and HR departments in this new environment.
The most well-known players in this field are Workday Learning, Cornerstone, or a newer player like 360Learning which has raised $ 200 million. Others include Degreed and Edcast. While most focus on the large enterprise market, Learnably caters to scale-ups and mid-size businesses (employees up to 2000 people.)
Dey told me that Learnerbly is particularly aimed at companies with “overworked teams of people and limited in-house L&D expertise / support”. This is why it is mostly aimed at technology startups.
