Beekeeper, the communications and operations platform designed specifically for frontline workers, raised USD 10 million in a Series B extension. This brings the total of the Series B to USD 60 million. The extension was led by Chicago-based Energize Ventures, with investment from HighSage Ventures, Swisscanto, Thayer, Swisscom, Alpana Ventures, and Swiss Post. Verve Ventures contributed USD 2.4 million.

Verve Ventures is a proud backer of Beekeeper since 2017 and this is Verve Ventures’ third financing round with them, showing the long-term partnerships that Verve Ventures establishes with the startups that pass its rigorous due diligence process.

The outbreak of the coronavirus has proven that digital communication is key, and that Beekeeper is as essential as the workers who use it: Several big companies, among them hospitals, were quick to adapt the communication platform. One big bank, for instance, took only one day to decide and was onboard the next business day. Such inbound demand and emergency requests allowed Beekeeper to surpass its targets in the first half-year by about 30% while increasing efficiency. In this interview, CEO Cris Grossmann explains how Beekeeper helps hospitals communicate faster.

“Beekeeper is a highly successful Swiss growth story. The company continues to impress us with its expansion of recurring revenues”, says Michael Blank, Head of Verve Ventures’ investment team.

Beekeeper is using the additional funding to expand its cloud marketplace for apps, solutions, and integrations and has announced a bold new evolution of its product: Beekeeper 2.0. While many companies in this space still focus on reaching frontline workers, Beekeeper goes one step further in digitally enabling them. The updated product creates a single point of contact for people, processes, and systems to improve the productivity, agility, and safety of frontline workers. It eliminates language barriers, halves the time team leads spend coordinating with employees, and makes it easy for every single team member to access the tools and information they need, when they need it.