LONDON, May 14, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- Sona, the next-generation, intelligent
workforce management platform for frontline enterprises founded by
Steffen Wulff Petersen, Oli Johnson and Ben
Dixon, announced today its $27.5M Series A. Felicis led the financing
with participation from Northzone, Google's AI-fund Gradient,
SpeedInvest, Antler, BAG Ventures, and numerous notable angels
participated in the round. Sona has raised $40M+ to date and will
use this fresh round of capital to expand its go-to-market function
and build more advanced AI capabilities on its platform. In 2023
alone, Sona experienced an explosive 400%+ revenue growth.
To date, over 4.6 million shifts have been created on Sona.
The frontline workforce represents nearly 2 billion people
worldwide, 56% of the global workforce. In spite of this, frontline
innovations have received <1% of VC funding, with 99% of venture
investment deployed in technology for white-collar staff. Today,
the tools and systems provided to frontline enterprises are
ineffective, poorly-integrated, and not built for the complexity of
frontline workflows. For decades, this lag in innovation has led to
a poor experience for employees and incorrect deployment of labor,
leading to unnecessary costs, suboptimal service, and revenue left
on the table.
"With Sona, we're building the 'self-driving car' of running
a restaurant or a care home", said Steffen
Wulff Petersen, co-founder of Sona. "The last 20 years of
workforce management was dominated by legacy point solutions that
digitized simple paper processes. Sona is building the next
generation of WFM with a truly intelligent platform that enables
organizational leaders in complex, multi-location enterprises to
put the right people, in the right place, at the right time; and to
seamlessly manage their workforce end-to-end."
Since 2020, frontline enterprises have faced multiple external
headwinds: inflationary forces, demand volatility, and staff
shortages. These businesses already operate with low single-digit
margins and labor mismanagement remains the single biggest, and
controllable, cost. Companies are now actively modernizing as they
are entering the vendor replacement cycle or moving away from paper
and spreadsheets. With Sona's industry-specific and highly
configurable software, their customers can pull multiple efficiency
levers. AI acceleration, accurate forecasting, data-driven
productivity models, and automated scheduling drive more
intelligent deployment of labor which directly translates into
significant profit increases.
"It's great to see Sona provide an industry-leading solution
for such a critical area for hospitality. Having been involved with
ever-evolving workforce management platforms for nearly ten years,
the results seen with Sona are impressive – from smart AI-enabled
dynamic forecasting to auto-scheduling and, importantly, employee
preferences and a slick 'consumer grade' app for ease of use," said
David Campbell, tenured executive
(Chairman, CEO) of numerous hospitality businesses (including
wagamama, PizzaExpress, The Ivy Collection, Bill's Restaurants, Ole
& Steen) and industry employee initiative Hospitality Rising.
"Quite rightly, hospitality businesses are driving productivity and
efficiency while building customer service – Sona has demonstrated
the ability to help grow sales and optimise staffing."
Sona's exponential growth is driven by the speed of product
delivery, high configurability, and sector expertise translating
into product features specific to the social care and hospitality
industries today. Unlike legacy platforms, Sona's modern technology
has been built from the ground up for real-time data processing and
insights. Leveraging the Elixir programming language and large
language models, Sona offers AI-powered real-time actionable
feedback driving intelligent decision making leading to workforce
productivity gains.
"We are proud to lead Sona's Series A round and support its
mission to empower frontline enterprises with cutting-edge
workforce management solutions," shared Niki Pezeshki, General Partner at Felicis. "We
believe in Sona's potential to redefine how businesses in sectors
like social care, restaurants, and hospitality manage their
workforce, and we're excited to be part of their journey towards
reshaping the future of work. Ben, Oli, Steffen and the Sona team
have already helped over 100,000 frontline workers schedule shifts,
and we know so many more will appreciate smarter software that
enables their work."
About Sona
Sona is the next-generation, intelligent workforce management
platform for frontline enterprises founded by Steffen Wulff Petersen, Oli Johnson and Ben
Dixon. Today, care homes, restaurants, and hotels all use
Sona to empower their staff, driving intelligent deployment of
labor which directly translates into significant operating
efficiencies. To learn more, visit www.getsona.com.
About Felicis
Founded in 2006, Felicis is a venture capital firm investing in
companies reinventing core markets, as well as those creating
frontier technologies. The firm was the first to offer a Founder
Development pledge, providing needed resources to help founders
scale themselves. Felicis focuses on early-stage investments and
currently manages over $3B in capital
across nine funds. The firm is an early backer of more than 49
companies valued at $1B+. More than 100 of its portfolio companies
have been acquired or gone public, including Adyen, Credit Karma,
Cruise, Fitbit, Guardant Health, Meraki, Ring, and Shopify. The
firm is based in Menlo Park and
San Francisco in California. Learn more at felicis.com.
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SOURCE Sona