Recruiting and on-boarding for deskless and hourly workers has always been a challenge, and startups have picked it up in recent years. These workers are often always in demand due to the traditionally high turnover rates, but many still rely on paper and videos.
Desmond Lim, Workstream co-founder and CEO. Image Credits: Work flow
Workstream is one of the startups working on a solution to this problem, in its case, mobile-first hiring and onboarding tools. The company has raised $60 million in Series B expansion funding from investors led by GGV Capital. We profiled Workstream twice when it raised $10 million in 2020 and again in 2021 for a $48 million Series B.
“The last couple of years have shown that there’s a huge gap in software built for this deskless, hourly worker,” Desmond Lim, co-founder and CEO of Workstream, told TechCrunch. My parents are both hourly workers, and I used to run my own restaurant, so I grew up in that place and saw the importance of that.
As mentioned, many startups are developing solutions to easily hire deskless, hourly and remote workers. Much of this crisis has come to light due to Covid, and venture capitalists have jumped in to support them.
Just this year, we have seen investments in Remofirst, which is to tackle international recruitment; Connecteam, a company that assembles HR tools; Emi, which developed software to speed up the time it takes to fill dozens of front-line workers; Flip, a chat app designed specifically for frontline workers; AskNicely, a frontline experience app; and SnapShift, a restaurant staff management web solution. Flash to that, Shiftsmart, When I Work, Fountain and Current, which held funding last year.
Lim noted that there are certainly many HR tools out there, but Workstream differentiates itself by making its software a mobile-first tool designed for deskless workers rather than employers.
“They really deserve better software and tools built for them, which is why our software is built with mobile, texting and their needs in mind,” he said.
The new investment brings the company’s total funding to more than $120 million and a “value of nearly half a billion dollars,” Lim said.
Joining GGV Capital in the investment are new and existing investors including Founders Fund, Koatu, Bond, Basis Set Ventures, CRV, World Innovation Lab and Soma Capital.
Meanwhile, the company is working with more than 170 quick-service restaurant brands, including Burger King, Dairy Queen and Jimmy John’s. Workstream revenue has grown 10x over the past 18 months, growing from 1,500 customers in 10,000 stores to over 4,000 customers in 25,000 locations by 2021. At the same time, the company has grown its own workforce to 220.
It is also expanding into new verticals outside of that sector and counts companies such as Marriott International, Ace Hardware, UPS and Europe Wax Center as clients.
“There are 2.7 billion deskless workers in the world and 70 million in the US,” Lim said. “We will expand beyond restaurants to supermarkets, retail, hotels, automotive, healthcare and more. With this funding, we will invest in R&D and back this strategy to support and be the first end-to-end software design for the deskless workforce. We can build to serve them.” There are so many products.
