Lepaya, an Amsterdam-based EdTech startup that provides soft-skills training courses, has raised €35 million in a Series B funding round led by Target Global.
The round was joined by Noor van Boven (formerly N26), Anna Brandt (formerly Mollie), entrepreneurs Jordy Kool (Urban Gym), and Chris Zadeh (formerly Ohpen), as well as existing investors Mediahuis Ventures and Tablomonto Venture Capital.
With this new funding, the company plans to grow its international presence and accelerate its strong momentum across all markets, further consolidating the EdTech market in 2022 with targets in Germany, the Nordics, and the UK.
Lepaya, founded by René Janssen and Peter Kuperus in 2018, has built a mobile learning app that allows companies across all industries to tailor training as per employees’ and executives’ needs. The platform has been established with the belief that the right training at the right time is key to making organizations more productive. By combining hard skills with soft skills, offered together as ‘Power Skills’, the startup is making itself a strong challenger in the growing European EdTech market, in which the demand for reskilling and upskilling continues to increase.
Lepaya’s mission is to empower professionals worldwide to be more effective in their work and to lead happier lives so that they can ignite businesses. It changes the way organizations develop their employees and every person at Lepaya has a role to play in doing so.
Talking about the platform, René Janssen, Co-founder & CEO of Lepaya, said,
“With the labour market undergoing rapid change, organizations face a huge skill gap. The lack of upskilling options is one of the top three reasons employees want to leave the company they are working for. At the same time, leaders need to understand and train for the challenges of the 21st century including remote work and empower their employees to grow. They must transform their workforce to drive productivity and growth as well as mitigate employee attrition. Lepaya anticipates this shift by providing training for power skills that make employees fit for the future of work. The investment showcases the immense potential of education technology, helping companies build a culture of learning and development.”
Lepaya, which has its offices in Amsterdam, Berlin and Munich, Stockholm, and London, combines over 50 soft and hard skill training modules into power skill development programs, offering learning interventions and real-time data on learner behavior and impact. Its services are integrated with Microsoft Teams and Slack, reducing classroom time by 50 percent. The Dutch company tripled its revenue in 2021 and has more than 150 clients, including Microsoft, L’Oréal, Takeaway, Hellofresh, Mollie, Flink, and KPMG.
Commenting on the funding, Bao-Y Van Cong, Investment Director of Target Global, said,
“We are excited to make our second investment in the BeNeLux region this year, and are pleased to partner with Lepaya at this exciting moment in their growth journey and support its growth initiatives to upskill the global workforce. With the European EdTech market still lagging behind the US and China, we believe there is an immense growth potential for Lepaya. The company’s international scale creates even more opportunity for the business going forward, with Lepaya planning to consolidate the market further in 2022.”
Earlier this year, the company expanded its operation into Sweden as a part of its expansion plan. In 2020, the company acquired Smartenup, a training company that supports professionals to work better, faster and smarter with data.
Lepaya had raised €5 million funding from media group Mediahuis in June last year. The recent funding brings the company’s total capital raised to $ 47 million.
