&Open co-founders Mark Legge, Ciara Flood and Jonathan Legge. Image: &Open
After raising fresh funding, &Open is launching a new service to bring on-demand corporate gifting to SMEs.
Dublin-based &Open has raised $26m in a new round of funding to invest in its corporate gifting platform for companies.
Announced today (22 June) at the Collision tech conference in Toronto, this Series A round was led by Molten Ventures. Other backers include First Round Capital, LocalGlobe, Tribal VC and Middlegame Ventures.
This brings the total funding raised by &Open to $33.2m to date. The company, which has created an online gifting platform for companies to reward customer loyalty or boost employee engagement, raised $7.2m in May 2021.
In December, it announced plans to create more than 100 new jobs, aiming to have a total headcount of 160 by the end of 2022. &Open currently has more than 90 employees across offices in Ireland, the UK and the US.
Now, with the latest funding, the company hopes to expand its reach as a scalable consumer-grade enterprise platform. It already serves leading Irish and international brands including Airbnb, Peloton, Spotify, Hopin, Intercom, Wayflyer and BetterUp.
On-demand gifting
The start-up also announced its latest offering, &Open On-Demand, which aims to bring its core business of corporate gifting to SMEs and make the service more accessible for smaller companies.
&Open On-Demand was hinted at earlier this year when CTO Ross Shannon told SiliconRepublic.com that the company was working on “a major expansion of its gifting capability” that would go live early this year.
“All companies gift – be it their employees, customers, prospects or partners,” said &Open CEO and co-founder Jonathan Legge about the latest announcement.
“Companies gift because people power businesses and those relationships need to be nurtured. Today, more than ever, loyalty matters.”
Legge co-founded &Open with Ciara Flood and Mark Legge in 2017 and its service is now active in more than 120 countries.
“With the support of our investors, we are excited to launch On-Demand to expand our reach and accelerate our growth as we fix corporate gifting and craft an operation that is rapidly becoming part of the solution,” he added.
&Open has had a stellar year in terms of business performance, increasing its annual recurring revenue by 376pc and seeing new clients grow by 270pc in the past year alone. The company expects demand to continue as businesses bank on customer and staff loyalty to see them through an impending economic downturn.
“Now, more than ever, companies are looking for ways to retain employees and foster real connections with customers and partners,” said Nicola McClafferty, partner at Molten Ventures.
“Working with some of the largest global businesses and brands, &Open has proven that gifting, when done right, is an incredibly powerful tool to increase brand loyalty and build advocacy.”
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