Learnerbly secures $10m Series A to empower employees globally to upskill and unlock potential

Beringea leads investment into learning and development platform founded by Rajeeb Dey MBE

London, 07 December 2021: Learnerbly, the SaaS-enabled marketplace for workplace learning and development, has secured $10m in its Series A led by Beringea, the transatlantic venture capital firm. The funding will accelerate the international growth of the preferred learning and development platform for many of Europe’s leading tech companies, including Hellofresh, King, and GoCardless.

Notable participants in the round included new investors Digital Horizon Ventures, BY Venture Partners, GO Ventures, and prolific marketplace venture fund FJ Labs, alongside existing investors Frontline Ventures, Triple Point, London Co-Investment Fund and UFI Ventures. Learnerbly also secured the backing of influential angel investors including Zach Coelius (Coelius Capital), Leonard Picardo (second employee at Deliveroo), Neil Ryland (CRO of Peakon), Renaud Visage (Co-Founder and CTO of Eventbrite), and Stephan Thoma (former Global Head of Learning at Google).

Learnerbly was founded in London in 2017 by Rajeeb Dey MBE, whose previous success in scaling Enternships – a portal connecting students and graduates with work placements in start-ups and fast-growth businesses – led to his recognition as the youngest recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2013. 

Learnerbly’s online marketplace guides and supports employees to access the most relevant resources covering a breadth of topic areas for first-time leaders through to engineers, marketers, finance and sales. They provide access to books, podcasts, conferences, courses, coaching and more from over 250 leading providers including Blinkist, Masterclass, Pluralsight, and General Assembly. This provides its clients, such as WeTransfer, Curve, and Busuu, with a platform that upskills, unlocks potential, and inspires a culture of growth in tech-focused businesses.

The global workplace learning industry is worth over $350bn and within many organisations has traditionally been delivered top-down, with businesses often viewing it simply as a compliance-driven necessity. The turbulence of the pandemic and the shift to distributed working has also placed far more scrutiny on how employers can invest in the growth of employees. Recent research by Beamery found that 83 percent of employees think companies should help with career progression, yet 44 percent don’t currently have access to talent acceleration programmes from their employers.

Learnerbly addresses this demand, providing employees with the tools to drive their growth and development and enabling employers to invest in the future success of their talent. This is a vital solution for upskilling to meet the demands of the changing workplace, while also being a talent attraction, engagement and retention strategy to remain competitive in the digital economy. Today, Learnerbly is used by thousands of employees in 100+ organisations across more than 50 countries. 

This round of funding will enable Learnerbly to strengthen its product development, scale its distributed workforce of more than 60 employees, and harness global demand for its services, particularly in the USA. It will be supported by Beringea, whose transatlantic footprint has provided many of its portfolio companies with valuable insights and intelligence for expansion in America.

Rajeeb Dey MBE, Founder and CEO of Learnerbly, commented:

“An increasingly competitive hiring market and the rise of the ‘great resignation’ mean employers worldwide are concerned about how they recruit and retain top talent.  The focus on learning and development (L&D) has, therefore, never been greater.

“And yet, many HR teams struggle to keep up with the breadth of content and pace of change required for L&D in the digital economy. At Learnerbly, we tackle these challenges head on. Our platform provides employees with the tools to discover exceptional content from more than 250 providers and tailor their own learning plans.

“This means employers – particularly scale-ups that don’t have vast in-house L&D functions – can easily offer access to best-in-class learning without ever needing to create their own content, manage relationships with multiple content providers, or take what we would deem a ‘one-size-fits-none’ approach to L&D. This clearly works: employers see a 3X+ increase in engagement in learning when using Learnerbly, saving clients vital time and money.”

Maria Wagner, Investment Director at Beringea, commented:

“With the hybrid work environment, employers are under pressure to offer new ways of learning for their employees and ensure they are engaged and retained. At the same time, HR departments are struggling with the proliferation of learning providers and managing multiple suppliers. Learnerbly offers a curated solution that serves both the needs of the employees and of HR departments in this new environment. We were impressed with Raj and the team, and we are excited to join them on their journey.”

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Notes to editors

Media contacts:  

 
Henry Philipson, Director of Marketing and Communications, Beringea 
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +44 (0)7837 162546 

Melissa Malec, Content Editor, Learnerbly

Email: [email protected] 

About Learnerbly

Learnerbly is a workplace learning platform supporting organisations ability to scale and compete through an attractive and effective Learning and Development offering that attracts, engages and retains top talent. Their marketplace of 250+ top learning providers upskills employees to give organisations a competitive edge while developing their people for the future. 

Learnerbly serves businesses across more than 50 countries, making Learning and Development management seamless for People and Finance teams while creating genuine opportunities for growth and innovation in their people.

For more information head to www.learnerbly.com

About Rajeeb Dey MBE

Rajeeb Dey MBE is Founder & CEO of Learnerbly – the workplace learning marketplace. Over the last 19 years he has launched three initiatives which help people advance in their working life. Today, he is founder and CEO of Learnerbly, an award winning curated marketplace of the best learning content from over 250 providers including coaching, courses, conferences, books and much more. Prior to this he founded Enternships, a portal connecting students and graduates to roles in over 7000 startups and fast growing businesses for which he was named the “02 X Young Entrepreneur of the Year” and the youngest recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2013. Rajeeb is also the Co-Founder of StartUp Britain, a national entrepreneurship campaign launched by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2011 and served as Trustee of UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs for over 10 years. He was appointed as the world’s youngest Young Global Leader (at 26) by the World Economic Forum in 2012 and appointed

Member of the British Empire (MBE) for Services to Entrepreneurship in 2016.

About Beringea

Beringea is a transatlantic venture capital investor that seeks to create lasting success for rapidly scaling entrepreneurial companies. It currently manages over $750m in funds and more than 65 portfolio companies across the U.K., Europe, and North America. 

With offices in London and Detroit (U.S.), it provides patient capital and a global footprint to back founders throughout their journey, helping them overcome barriers to scale and build international success stories.

Its track record of three decades of successful investing across sectors including retail, software, media, and artificial intelligence has inspired its own entrepreneurial ethos; cultivated an exceptional community of entrepreneurs and investors; and fostered the experience required to create substantial businesses and deliver value for shareholders in its funds.
For information on our UK investment activities, email [email protected] or visit www.beringea.com.