Workforce upskilling firm Lepaya powers up with $40 million raise, acquisitions on the horizon

Amsterdam’s power skills training provider Lepaya has raised $40 million in a Series B round. With its upskilling offer, the company aims to provide enterprise and fast-growing companies with a more productive workforce. The new investment will allow the company to further establish its market position, building upon the 2020 acquisition of crosstown rival Smartenup, and has a series of purchases planned for the UK, Germany, and Nordic markets. The funding will also help drive the continued development and refinement of the firms' product lineup. Founded in 2018, Lepaya has now raised a total of $47 million in funding.

With an estimated $370 billion on the table, the global training and development sector is no small ticket item. And this figure is only expected to increase, as according to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 The Future of Jobs report, 50 percent of all employees will need reskilling by 2025. Now combine this with the ongoing war for talent, and suddenly upskilling an existing workforce becomes quite an attractive offer to companies around the globe.

“With the labor market undergoing rapid change, organizations face a huge skill gap,” commented Lepaya CEO and co-founder René Janssen. “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.”

With this in mind, Lepaya is, and in many cases, already has, adapted to this shift, with plans already in motion to significantly expand its offline and online training offering. The company is likewise hard at work developing deeper personalisation options within its training programmes, alongside more meaningful and practical applications of integrating the learning experience into office productivity systems.

Hosting a catalogue of over 50 unique soft and hard skill training modules, Lepaya also provides clients including Microsoft, L’Oréal, Takeaway, Hellofresh, Mollie, Flink, and KPMG with tangible results via real-time data reporting that focuses on learner behavior and the impact of trainings.

Lypaya’s $40 million Series B round raise was led by Target Global and joined by Noor van Boven (formerly N26), Anna Brandt (formerly Mollie), Chris Zadeh (Ophen), and Jordy Kool (Urban Gym). Existing investors Mediahuis Ventures and Tablomonto participated in the round.