Yonder founders. Image: Yonder
Founded this year, Yonder is already eyeing expansion in European markets with its employee benefits platform.
Irish software start-up Yonder has raised a €2.6m funding round led by Northzone and Frontline Ventures.
Yonder was founded in 2022 by a team of experienced engineers and entrepreneurs. It is developing a platform to automate employee benefits such as health insurance and pensions.
The start-up’s founders – CEO Luke Mackey, CTO Patrick O’Boyle and director of engineering Deepak Baliga – shared a frustration with the slow, paper-based process of setting up benefits for workers.
Mackey previously founded food-tech app Bamboo and was country manager for ride-hailing start-up Bolt. O’Boyle was CTO of Bamboo, while Baliga is a former engineer at Irish food-tech unicorn Flipdish.
Yonder said it will use the €2.6m funding boost to streamline the provision of benefits for an “underserved generation” of workers.
Its platform aims to make it easier for businesses to provide health, dental, vision and pension benefits to employees, regardless of where they work. It also has a mobile app that lets workers manage their own personal benefits.
The service is currently in beta, although Yonder is adding companies to its waitlist before onboarding them periodically. Businesses will soon be able to integrate existing HR tools such as Personio and BambooHR with the platform.
“Yonder is rebuilding the entire employee benefits experience,” said Mackey. “Access to core employee benefits was once efficient and scalable, but dominated by slow, tedious processes the industry has become plagued by inefficiency.
“Yonder is modernising the $100bn employee benefits industry, starting with health insurance and pensions, by working with forward-thinking carriers and scaling their offering to streamline access for global businesses and their employees.”
As well as Northzone and Frontline Ventures, the oversubscribed funding round saw participation from Cocoa, Broadstone, Uncommon Projects and several angel investors.
Yonder will use the fresh capital to accelerate product development and hire across engineering, product, go-to-market and commercial roles.
The start-up is eyeing further expansion into existing markets such as the UK and Ireland, and new markets to meet growing demand across the rest of Europe.
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