Osborne Clarke advises Highland Europe on its lead in YOOBIC's $50 million Series C round

Reading-based lawyers from Osborne Clarke have advised Highland Europe on its lead in YOOBIC’s $50 million Series C funding round. Existing investors Felix Capital, Insight Partners, and a single family office advised by BNF Capital also participated in the round.

With $80m in total fundraising since inception, YOOBIC’s all-in-one digital workplace is the first full-service software platform designed for frontline teams. Its scalable and user-friendly app gives retail associates, restaurant staff, fieldworkers, and all types of frontline employees a single centralised mobile hub to support their daily task management, deliver digital training, and enable seamless communication with peers, supervisors and HQ.

That’s a gamechanger for the world’s 2.7b deskless workers who currently make up 80% of the global workforce. Despite making invaluable contributions during the pandemic, frontline workers remain underserved, with only 1% of IT spending currently targeting deskless employees. Tech enablement for frontline workers is more important than ever in the post-pandemic environment, as businesses resume in-person operations and scale up to support the reopening economy, while navigating the compounding challenges of staffing shortages and post-covid financial pressures. To overcome such challenges, businesses need to ensure consistent and efficient execution, streamlined communication and improved training and upskilling for their essential frontline employees.

YOOBIC is already helping more than 300 top brands across 80 countries to give frontline workers the digital support they need to succeed at over 335,000 locations spanning retail, hospitality, distribution, manufacturing, and more. Operations, HR, and L&D leaders at iconic companies including Boots, Carrefour, Lancôme, Lacoste, Logitech, Lidl, Peloton, Puma, Vans, VF Corp, and Sanofi all rely on YOOBIC to drive operational efficiency, achieve network-wide performance consistency, and upskill their frontline workforce.

The Series C round will support YOOBIC’s continuing growth, including a 75% increase in headcount to bring the company’s global workforce to 350 by 2022, with a focus on bringing on tech, sales, customer success and marketing talents. As YOOBIC continues to consolidate its market leadership in EMEA and accelerating growth in North America, the investment will also turbocharge the company’s R&D efforts, particularly in data intelligence and predictive insights, and enable them to develop services for frontline employees in sectors such as manufacturing, warehousing, and transportation.

The Osborne Clarke team was comprised of partner Rob Wood (pictured) and associate Josephine Healy.