Month: May 2020

Salman Sarfraz

GO1 – Online Training Platform for Businesses Raises $40M in Series C

GO1 Raises $40M in Series C

GO1, a Brisbane based online training platform allowing enterprises to provide necessary training on compliance, business and IT skills development to their employees has raised $40M in Series C. The funding round was led by SEEK and Madrona Venture Group in participation with M12, Salesforce Ventures and TechCrunch Innovation Fund.

GO1 already raised $40M collectively from Series A (2018) and B (2019) rounds so the total funding amount of GO1 now stands at $83.7M.

“GO1’s growth over the last couple of months has been unprecedented and the use of online tools for training is now undergoing a structural shift,” said Andrew Barnes, CEO of GO1, in a statement. “It is gratifying to fill an important void right now as workers embrace online solutions. We are inspired about the future that we are building as we expand our platform with new mediums that reach millions of people every day with the content they need.”

“GO1 has been critical for business continuity as organizations navigate the remote realities of COVID-19,” said Nagraj Kashyap, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Global Head of M12,  in a statement. “The GO1 integration with Microsoft Teams offers a seamless learning experience at a time when 75 million people are using the application daily. We’re proud to invest in a solution helping keep employees learning and businesses growing through this time.”

“We are excited about partnering with GO1 as it looks to scale its online content hub globally. While the majority of corporate learning is done in person today, we believe the new digital imperative will see an acceleration in the shift to online learning tools. We believe GO1 fits well into the Trailhead ecosystem and our vision of creating the life-long learner journey,” said Rob Keith, Head of Australia, Salesforce Ventures,  in a statement.

“We met GO1 many months before COVID-19 was on the tip of everyone’s tongue and were impressed then with the growth of the platform and the ability of the team to expand their corporate training offering significantly in North America and Europe,” commented S. Somasegar, managing director, Madrona Venture Group, in a statement. “The global pandemic has only increased the need to both provide training and retraining – and also to do it remotely. GO1 is an important link in the chain of recovery.” As part of the funding Somasegar will join the GO1 board of directors.

Please read full story at TechCrunch.

Salman Sarfraz

UpKeep – Maintenance Management Software Designed for Mobile Use Raises $36M in Series B

UpKeep - Mobile-first CMMS

After going through seed round in 2017 and raising Series A of $10M in 2018, the maintenance management software designed specially with mobile-first mindset, UpKeep CMMS has raised another $36M in Series B round. The funding round was led by Insight Partners in participation with Y Combinator, FundersClub, Mucker Capital, Emergence and Battery Ventures. With the newly acquired amount in Series B, UpKeep’s total funding amount has raised to $48.8M.

UpKeep offers plenty of features to help technicians and maintenance teams become more productive and agile. The pricing plans of UpKeep CMMS start from $35/m per user and go up to $180/m per user for large enterprises.

Technicians have to log plenty of information when they’re out on the job, but this usually involved writing this info down on paper and then returning to a desk to input the data into the system.

With UpKeep, the requester can use the app itself to notify the facilities manager of problems, or send an email that flows directly into the UpKeep system. Facilities managers use UpKeep to prioritize and assign issues to their team of technicians, who then receive the work orders right on UpKeep.

Instead of logging information on paper, these technicians can take pictures of the problem and note the parts they need or other details of the job right in the app. No duplication of effort.

“Yes, we track technicians and it’s a tool to manage work done by people,” said Chan. “But a manufacturing facility really cares much more about the equipment. They can use UpKeep to manage things like how many hours of downtime a piece of equipment has, etc. It’s more targeted toward the actual asset and the equipment versus the person completing their work.”

Chan said that around 80 percent of the company’s 400,000 users are on the free version of the app. Some brands on the app include Unilever, Siemens, DHL, McDonald’s, and Jet.com. Chan said UpKeep saw a 206 percent increase in revenue in 2019.

Please read full story at TechCrunch.