how.fm's $5.4 million seed round is led by Join Capital, with renewed investments from Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures, as well as a number of industry-leading angels.
The how.fm seed round of 5.4 million US dollars is supported by Join Capital listed, with renewed investments from Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures as well as a number of industry-leading angels.
The company will use the funding to recruit new people for the entire company; to build sales teams in the UK and Europe and to expand from logistics to other high-revenue vertical areas.
how.fm, the SaaS training platform that enables warehouse operators to train, educate and support their employees on a daily basis, announces that the company has received a seed round of 5.4 million US dollars. The company will use the funding to hire new employees, expand its sales teams in Cologne and London, and further expand into the manufacturing, retail and food industries.
The how.fm seed round of 5.4 million US dollars is supported by Join Capital listed, with renewed investments from Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures as well as a number of industry-leading angels.
The round was made by Join Capital listed, including former investors Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures involved. Other investors in the round include former CEO of Amazon UK, Christopher North, CEO of Berlin-based logistics service provider Forto, Michael Wax, as well as angel investments from Allegro CEO Francois Nuyts and business angel Andrej Henkler. As part of the capital raising, Jan Borgstädt, partner of Join Capital, will also join the how.fm-Join board of directors.
Since the start of the pandemic, the trend towards online shopping has accelerated; e-commerce logistics has exploded, and so has the number of warehouse workers. Interact Analysis has discovered that “28,500 additional warehouses will be added [worldwide] in the next five years,” which require appropriate personnel who, in addition to various aspects of compliance, must also be trained.
This boom in e-commerce and fulfillment has led to a war for warehouse workers in an industry that depends on being able to hire anyone from anywhere. Once an employee is hired, it can cost more than $7,000 to replace them due to spending on personal training, loss of productivity, and quality. In the logistics and warehousing sector, the turnover rate is 59.5% per year among permanent employees and 420% among temporary workers, who cover 2 to 4 peaks per year. It is therefore crucial to attract a high number of efficient employees.
The company based in Germany how.fm was created in 2019 by Serial Entrepreneurs Andreas Kwiatkowski and Farhoud Cheraghi founded and transformed the onboarding and support of workers by disseminating knowledge and optimizing processes in companies.
Companies need the ability to hire employees in any language, get them up and running quickly, while keeping their already thin shift of experienced, long-standing staff as little as possible.
Die how.fm-Software covers pre-onboarding, orientation, health & safety, workplace-related skills, and work instructions. The SaaS solution from how.fm generates company-specific pages that enable companies to put training on “autopilot” and at the same time increase the safety and quality of their processes. This means lower costs and less effort for site managers to train their employees.
The company's customer data shows that the solutions work. how.fm provides off-the-job training that ensures full compliance and has reduced customer churn by 5%. In addition, the company offers on-the-job training, which has reduced start-up time by 15% and increased output quality by 30%, as well as live support, which has resulted in a 50% reduction in disruptions.
To customers of how.fm include companies such as Ingram Micro and Kuehne + Nagel as well as many other logisticians and brands that operate thousands of warehouses around the world.
To current customers of how.fm include the world's leading logistics companies as well as brand companies throughout Europe that how.fm use it to create guidelines and process training and train your employees in over 30 different languages.
how.fm is able to solve key high-growth and high-revenue operational issues, including addressing staffing shortages thanks to the global talent pool, which it unlocks by removing language barriers. In addition, supports how.fm scalability by enabling rapid growth, and helps companies adapt to seasonal fluctuations and increase response time by ensuring effective onboarding and training of their employees. With the live support option, warehouses can monitor regulatory compliance while achieving operational excellence as a service.
how.fm is already bridging the gap between high growth and high fluctuation in the logistics sector. With its multilingual training platform, it has enabled warehouses to tap into the global talent pool and scale quickly. Especially during peak season, this is a boon for warehouse managers, as they no longer have to worry about onboarding, training, and compliance.
The team, led by successful entrepreneurs, consists of software developers, data scientists and business experts with a wealth of experience in business and computer science. Co-founders Andreas Kwiatkowski and Farhoud Cheraghi previously worked at trivago, simfy and IBM.
Andreas Kwiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of how.fm, says: “Employers in warehousing and distribution must make a huge effort when hiring, training and ensuring compliance with regulations for every single employee — and that in an industry where staff turnover is exceptionally high. As online shopping and e-commerce increase, increasing competition for efficient personnel will cost companies dearly. how.fm aims to streamline the repetitive process of onboarding and managing employees — in each employee's native language. This allows managers to focus on the most valuable areas of the company. ”
Jan Borgstädt, founding partner of Join Capital and new board member of how.fm, says: “The logistics industry is under tremendous pressure to deal with the steady increase in e-commerce, and most logistics service providers have very outdated onboarding processes. Andreas and his team impressed us with a very brief proof-of-value when we introduced them to 4 potential customers in our network. We liked the implementation power that drives the founders, as well as their positive response within the join network, which, within a few minutes, unanimously revealed the potential added value of how.fm recognized for their daily logistics processes. ”
Andreas Andersson, EMEA Safety Lead at Ingram Micro, said:”how.fm helps us overcome the language barriers that our company faces on a daily basis. The CMS system allows us to quickly create training material that we can use for anyone in our facilities, regardless of type of employment or country of origin. The fact that we can test the knowledge of every training participant also helps us a lot to comply with regulations. An excellent system that is easy to implement, set up, and use.
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