PERKBOX, UK'S Leading Employee Perks & Benefits Provider Secures £2.5M Backing From DRAPER ESPRIT

LONDON, October 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Digital employee engagement firm Perkbox has today secured £2.5m backing from VC Draper Esprit who invested on the same terms as other early-stage investors on equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs. Perkbox launched on Seedrs this Monday with a target of £1.5 million and has already overfunded to £4 million exceeding its crowdfunding target by 270%.

This is the first funding round for Perkbox since launch, when the founders made a decision to grow organically following a £350,000 investment secured at seed stage from Zoopla CEO Alex Chesterman and AC Sherry Coutu back in 2011, when it originally launched as Huddlebuy, a group-buying platform for SMEs.

Perkbox was conceived after the business pivoted three times to hone its offering of providing a digital engagement platform that enables companies of all sizes, including startups, to incentivise, motivate and attract staff through over 200 perks and benefits and a sophisticated rewards & recognition infrastructure.

Launched in 2015, the company already has over 300,000 paying members ranging from SMEs to large corporations such as British Gas and BUPA. Monthly recurring revenue has grown more than 10 times to £1.4m/month in 18 months, tripling sales in 2015 and expecting to triple sales again in 2016. The company's goal is to achieve a turnover of £100 million in three years and become one of the UK's largest software services for businesses.  

The money raised from Draper Esprit and Seedrs investors will fast-track Perkbox's mission to transform unhappy workplaces stateside and across Europe having seen the appetite for the scheme in the UK. The estimated global potential is £22 billion and Perkbox has its sights firmly set on tapping into these markets.

Perkbox was recently listed no. 2 in the Startups 100 Index for being one of the most innovative emerging ventures in the country.

Simon Cook, CEO, Draper Esprit, comments: "We are excited to be leading this growth round in Perkbox alongside a great angel group and the crowd. Employee motivation is a fundamental issue for today's best companies, small and large, and the Perkbox digital platform is the best we have seen. Perkbox sits alongside other investments we have made in the customer satisfaction space, such as Trustpilot and Conversocial, while its growing focus on employee well being exists with companies such as Graze, Push Doctor and Lifesum."

The campaign remains open for funding on Seedrs.

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Notes to editors: 

About Perkbox 

Perkbox is a cloud-based employee perks and engagement platform for business of all sizes, giving employers and employees a range of great perks, social reward and recognition tools and health and wellness platforms that help employers promote the financial, emotional and physical wellbeing of their team.  

Perkbox was set up with the belief that the best companies to work for look after their teams and value their staff.  The most successful businesses are comprised of people who are engaged, satisfied and loyal. Providing perks and engagement tools helps build stronger teams and incentivises workers to aspire to greatness.  

Until recently, only large corporations could afford to pay for employee perks. Perkbox's easy and wholly customised offering allows SMEs to reward and incentivise their growing team with perks that help build a happy work culture with an investment in line with their budgets.

For more information about Perkbox and interviews / image requests contact:
Andrea San Pedro, PR Director, tel: [phone], email: [e-mail]

About Draper Espirt

Draper Esprit (http://www.draperesprit.com) was founded in 2006, and is one of the largest and most active VC firms in Europe, helping entrepreneurs to build global ground-breaking technology companies. In 2016 it moved its primary funds into a listed PLC model (LSE: GROW.L) in order to take a longer term, multi-stage, patient capital approach. In recent years, Draper Esprit's exits have generated more than $3 billion in combined enterprise value. Draper Esprit is the exclusive European member of the Silicon Valley-based Draper Global Network with offices around the world, with portfolio companies including Baidu, Skype, Space X, Tesla and Yammer and other world leading companies.