digitization
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Parsable scores $60M Series D as pandemic forces faster digitization of industrial sector
It seems the pandemic has forced the business world to digitize faster, and the industrial sector is no different. Parsable, a San Francisco startup that is helping digitize industrial front-line workers, announced a $60 million Series D today.
Activate Capital and Glade Brook Capital Partners co-led the round. They got help from new investors Alumni Ventures Group, Cisco Investments, Downing Ventures, Evolv Ventures and Princeville Capital, along with existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Future Fund, B37 Ventures, Honeywell and Saudi Aramco. Today’s money brings the total raised to more than $133 million, according to the company.
As I wrote at the time of the company’s $40 million Series C in 2018, “Parsable has developed a Connected Worker platform to help bring high tech solutions to deskless industrial workers who have been working mostly with paper-based processes.”
CEO Lawrence Whittle says that while the pandemic has shut some factories, and reduced overall worker headcount, it has still led to increased usage on the platform of companies whose products are considered essential services. What’s more, Parsable’s ability to deal with information on an individual mobile device or laptop means that in many cases, workers can stay separated and not share computers on the factory floor, making the process safer.
“Fortunately, the majority of our focus is in what’s often deemed as essential industries — so consumer packaged goods (CPG), food, beverage, agriculture and related industries such as paper and packaging. Those markets, interestingly enough, predominantly because of consumer demand continue to operate pretty successfully from a demand perspective during this COVID period,” Whittle told TechCrunch.
While the company would not give specific growth numbers, they shared that registered users grew 11x and the number of deployed sites tripled year over year. What’s more, they have users in more than 100 countries encompassing 14 languages.
With the money, the company wants to expand internationally into Asia, EMEA and Latin America. The startup has 120 employees, but plans to hire for essential needs over the next several months, preferring to be conservative and seeing where the pandemic takes the economy in the coming months.
Whittle points out that the diversity of its user base, and the desire to expand into other regions demands that they have a more diverse employee base, even while it’s a clear ethical consideration, as well.
“When you’re serving customers in over 100 countries, and you provide a product in in 14 languages, [having] diversity and inclusion is to some extent a given. What we’re doing as a company […] is taking every opportunity to further lean into that and that’s one of the leading lights of our of our business,” Whittle said.
Parsable launched in 2013. It took a few years to build the product. Today, customers include Georgia-Pacific, Henkel and Shell.
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IObeya raises $17M to digitize management planning processes like Agile
As we move deeper into the pandemic, companies are looking for ways to digitize processes that previously required in-person meetings with manual approaches. Investors appear to be rewarding companies that can achieve this. IObeya, a French company that helps digitize management planning processes like lean and agile, announced a $17 million Series A today.
Red River West led the round with help from Atlantic Bridge Capital and Fortino Capital Partners. It has now raised a total of $20 million, according to the company.
Tim McCracken, who heads up the company’s U.S. operations, says the name comes from the Japanese word for the large room where companies did all their planning. Many companies gather a group of people in a conference room and line the walls with sticky notes and white boards with their plans for the coming weeks and months.
Even before the pandemic struck, it wasn’t the most effective way to record this valuable business content, and iObeya has developed a service to put it in the digital realm. “And so one of the things that they did with those obeya rooms was they had lots of different visual management boards with Post-it notes and with different types of indicators that they would use to manage their business. And so what iObeya does is digitize that type of visual management, so that you can access it from multiple locations and share it amongst teams and basically eliminate the need for doing it on paper and on walls,” McCracken explained.
This involves digitizing four main areas that include lean management, factory floor management, agile programming and, finally, what they call the digital workplace, which includes design thinking, virtual whiteboarding and brainstorming. All of these approaches have lots of planning associated with them and could benefit from being moved online.
Image Credits: iObeya
They are approaching 100 employees, with the majority in France right now, with a small office in the U.S. (in Seattle), but they will be using this money to expand with plans to add 50 more people. He says the company has always looked at diversity when it comes to its hiring practices.
“We want to try to attract, not only experienced salespeople, as well as the support organization around them, but also really do as much outreach in the local community to see how we can ensure that our workforce reflects the community,” he said.
As the company had to shut down offices due to COVID-19, McCracken says their own software helped them make that transition more smoothly. “We actually use our own software to manage business so we had very little disruption to our actual work. At the same time, the volume of work increased probably four to five fold, simply because of increased demand for the software. So we had to manage not only moving from working in an office to work at home, but also the increased workload,” he said.
The company was founded near Paris in 2011. They plan to use the money to expand operations in the U.S. and build awareness of the company through greater sales and marketing spend.
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5G, AI, cybersecurity and renewable energy set for investment boost under EU coronavirus recovery plan
The European Commission is proposing to direct billions of euros of financial relief into high tech and green investments to help the bloc recover from the coronavirus crisis.
Technologies such as 5G, AI, cloud, cybersecurity, supercomputing and renewable energy look set to benefit from a €750BN pan-EU support package set out today — aligning with the Commission’s pre-existing policy priorities before the pandemic struck the region, causing thousands of deaths and major economic damage.
“Urgent action is needed to kick-start the economy and create the conditions for a recovery led by private investment in key sectors and technologies. This investment is particularly crucial to the success of Europe’s green and digital transitions,” it writes in a factsheet on its budget proposal set out today — which is being slated as a wider “recovery plan” for Europe.
“Investment in key sectors and technologies, from 5G to artificial intelligence and from clean hydrogen to offshore renewable energy, holds the key to Europe’s future,” it adds.
On the green deal front, it’s touting:
- A massive renovation wave of our buildings and infrastructure and a more circular economy, bringing local jobs;
- Rolling out renewable energy projects, especially wind, solar and kick-starting a clean hydrogen economy in Europe;
- Cleaner transport and logistics, including the installation of one million charging points for electric vehicles and a boost for rail travel and clean mobility in our cities and regions;
It also plans to funnel more financial support into a Just Transition Fund to support re-skilling and help businesses tap into the economic opportunities offered by digitization and going green.
The Commission estimates that at least €1.5 trillion will be needed to reboot the EU’s economy as a result of the pandemic crisis in 2020-2021 alone — so the budget proposals include a revision of the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework as well as a financial framework for the 2021-2027 period.
The Commission is proposing to borrow €750BN on the financial markets, through the issuance of bonds, for a ‘Next Generation EU’ fund which will be channelled through EU programs between 2021 and 2024 — with the loan to be repaid over “a long period of time throughout future EU budgets” (not before 2028 and not after 2058).
It’s proposing three investment pillars for this fund: One focused on support for EU Member States via direct investment and reforms; a second focused on kick starting the EU economy by incentivizing private investments; and a third aimed at learning lessons from the COVID-19 crisis, with a big focus on health, as well as civil contingencies and foreign aid.
Under the first pillar, digital and green technologies are set to benefit from a proposed €560BN Recovery and Resilience Facility that will offer EU Member States financial support for related investments and reforms, including a grant facility of up to €310BN and up to €250BN available in loans.
“Support will be available to all Member States but concentrated on the most affected and where resilience needs are the greatest,” the Commission said today.
It’s also proposing €15BN extra for the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development — to “support rural areas in making the structural changes necessary in line with the European Green Deal and achieving the ambitious targets in line with the new biodiversity and Farm to Fork strategies”.
Under the second pillar, a new Solvency Support Instrument is intended to mobilize private resources to support what the Commission bills as “viable” European companies in the sectors, regions and countries most affected. It wants this support to be operational from 2020, and is suggesting a budget of €31BN with the aim of aiming to unlock €300BN in solvency support for companies from all economic sectors (to “prepare them for a cleaner, digital and resilient future”, as it puts it).
There’s also more money for the InvestEU investment program which the Commission wants to see hitting €15.3BN over the budget period to spin up more private investment in projects across the EU.
It’s also proposing a new Strategic Investment Facility be built into InvestEU which it wants to generate investments of up to €150BN to boost the resilience of “strategic sectors”, again notably those linked to the green and digital transition — with €15BN set to be chipped in here from the Next Generation EU pot.
Under the third pillar, the Commission is earmarking €9.4BN for a new health programme, EU4Health, that’s intended to strengthen health security and prepare for future health crises.
While the Horizon Europe research program is set to get €94.4BN — including to support what it dubs “vital research” in health, resilience and the green and digital transitions.
Commenting in a statement, European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “The recovery plan turns the immense challenge we face into an opportunity, not only by supporting the recovery but also by investing in our future: the European Green Deal and digitalization will boost jobs and growth, the resilience of our societies and the health of our environment. This is Europe’s moment. Our willingness to act must live up to the challenges we are all facing. With Next Generation EU we are providing an ambitious answer.”
In terms of next steps, the Commission’s budget proposals will need to gain political agreement from the European Council. It’s hoping will be achieved by July, with the EU’s executive keen to impress on Member States there’s no time to lose in financing coronavirus relief.
The EU parliament will also need to have its say but the Commission has penciled in early autumn for the adoption of the revised 2014-2020 framework and December 2020 for adoption of the revised Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027 (as well as Member States’ Own Resources Decision) — with the aim of implementing the latter framework in January 2021.
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