Spain’s Jobandtalent raises €180m to drive ecommerce expansion

Jobandtalent, an online staffing agency for temporary workers, has raised €183m in new funding from investors including SoftBank’s Vision Fund, as the pandemic drives soaring demand for workers in logistics and ecommerce businesses.

The new round for the Madrid-based company makes Jobandtalent one of the most prominent start-ups in Spain, alongside delivery app Glovo and taxi app Cabify.

The financing, which takes the form of €100m in new equity from SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and €83m in debt from BlackRock, comes at a time when many European countries are re-examining labour rules, especially in gig economy work such as ride-hailing and food delivery.

Jobandtalent serves as employer to the 80,000 workers who have used its app and online marketplace to find temp roles at one of more than 850 companies, including ecommerce services eBay and Ocado and logistics groups XPO and Ceva. Its founders say it provides benefits including pensions, sick and holiday pay, training and health insurance.

While Jobandtalent does not primarily cater to gig workers, its attempt to balance more flexible work with employee benefits comes when companies such as Uber are being forced to search for new employment models. In recent months, courts and regulators in the UK, Spain and Italy have found that ride-hailing drivers and food delivery couriers should be classed as workers, rather than self-employed contractors.

By using algorithms to match workers to prospective employers, Jobandtalent claims it is able to operate more efficiently than traditional staffing agencies like Adecco, Randstad or Manpower.

“We are aiming to disrupt the big players, which have brick and mortar structures with human-based processes,” said Juan Urdiales, who co-founded Jobandtalent with co-chief executive Filepe Navio in 2009 after the economic crisis sent unemployment in Spain to record highs.

The country is once again wrestling with rising levels of unemployment, although it has so far avoided a repeat of the peak of 26 per cent joblessness that followed the 2008 financial crash. Total unemployment rose above 4m for the first time in five years this month, with an additional 900,000 people on furlough schemes. 

Spain also has the highest rate of temporary employment in the EU — more than one in five employees — which many politicians and economists see as one of the main structural flaws of its economy, arguing it leads to under-investment and low levels of training.

Urdiales says that unlike traditional temp agencies, Jobandtalent’s focus is on the worker rather than employer. It gathers data on workers using its platform, including job satisfaction, tenure and preferred hours, to match them with employers, who also use its app to manage contracts, payroll and shifts.

“Being digital allows you to tap part of the market where it was too costly or inefficient to do before,” said Anthony Doeh, a partner at SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, which so far is capitalised entirely by the Japanese technology and telecoms group. “We are at the point in time now where artificial intelligence is becoming more and more sophisticated so there can be successful and scalable applications in human capital.”

Jobandtalent, which has now raised a total of €310m from investors including Atomico and DN Capital, reached €500m in annualised billings last year and is profitable on the basis of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. It operates in six European markets as well as Mexico and Colombia, and plans to expand into the US using the new funds.

The pandemic has hit some of Jobandtalent’s traditional recruiters, such as high-street retail, but exploding demand for online retail is creating new positions in warehouses and driving deliveries.

“Ecommerce is clearly moving and reshaping the labour market,” said Urdiales.

Additional reporting by Daniel Dombey in Madrid