The $5.4 million seed round for how.fm is led by Join Capital, with follow-on 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 employees across the entire organization; to build sales teams in the UK and Europe; and to expand from logistics into other high-revenue vertical sectors.
how.fm, the SaaS training platform that enables warehouse operators to train, upskill, and support their employees daily, announces today that the company has secured a $5.4 million seed round. 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 $5.4 million seed round for how.fm is led by Join Capital, with follow-on investments from Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures, as well as a number of industry-leading angels.
The round was led by Join Capital, with participation from previous investors Kindred Capital and Capnamic Ventures. Other investors in the round include former Amazon UK CEO Christopher North, the CEO of Berlin-based logistics provider Forto, Michael Wax, as well as angel investments from Allegro CEO Francois Nuyts and business angel Andrej Henkler. As part of the capital raise, Jan Borgstädt, Partner at Join Capital, will also join the how.fm board.
Since the start of the pandemic, the trend toward online shopping has accelerated; e-commerce logistics has exploded, and with it, the number of warehouse workers. Interact Analysis has found that “over the next five years, 28,500 additional warehouses will be added [globally],” requiring corresponding personnel who must be trained alongside various compliance points.
This boom in e-commerce and fulfillment has led to a war for warehouse talent in an industry that relies 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 expenses for in-person training, productivity losses, and quality issues. In the logistics and warehousing industry, the turnover rate for permanent staff is 59.5% per year, and for temporary workers covering 2 to 4 peaks per year, it is 420%. Therefore, attracting a high number of efficient employees is crucial.
Based in Germany, how.fm was founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneurs Andreas Kwiatkowski and Farhoud Cheraghi and transforms the onboarding and support of workers by distributing knowledge and optimizing processes within companies.
Companies need the ability to hire employees in any language, get them up to speed quickly, and minimize the burden on the already thin layer of experienced, long-term staff.
The how.fm software covers pre-onboarding, orientation, health & safety, job-related skills, and work instructions. The SaaS solution from how.fm generates company-specific pages that allow businesses to put training on “autopilot” while increasing the safety and quality of their operations. This means lower costs and less effort for site managers when training their employees.
The company’s customer data shows that the solutions work. how.fm offers off-the-job training that ensures full compliance and has reduced the churn rate among its customers by 5%. Furthermore, the company offers on-the-job training that has shortened ramp-up time by 15% and increased output quality by 30%, as well as live support that has led to a 50% reduction in interruptions.
Customers of how.fm include companies such as Ingram Micro and Kühne + Nagel, as well as many other logistics providers and brands operating thousands of warehouses around the world.
Current customers of how.fm include world-leading logistics companies and brand-name corporations across Europe, which use how.fm to create policy and process training and to train their employees in over 30 different languages.
how.fm is able to solve key operational problems with high growth and high revenue, including addressing labor shortages thanks to the global talent pool it unlocks by removing language barriers. Furthermore, how.fm supports scalability by enabling rapid growth and helps companies adapt to seasonal fluctuations and increase response times by ensuring effective onboarding and training of their employees. With the live support option, warehouses can monitor compliance while achieving operational excellence as a service.
how.fm is already bridging the gap between high growth and high turnover in the logistics industry. With its multilingual training platform, it has enabled warehouses to tap into the global talent pool and scale quickly. Especially during peak seasons, this is a boon for warehouse managers as they no longer have to worry about onboarding, training, and compliance.
Led by successful entrepreneurs, the team 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 have to put in an enormous effort when hiring, training, and ensuring compliance for every single employee—and this is in an industry where staff turnover is exceptionally high. As online shopping and e-commerce grow, the increasing competition for efficient personnel will cost companies dearly. how.fm aims to streamline the repetitive process of onboarding and managing employees—in the native language of every single worker. This allows managers to focus on the most valuable areas of the business.”
Jan Borgstädt, founding partner of Join Capital and new board member of how.fm, says: “The logistics industry is under enormous pressure to handle the constant increase in e-commerce, and most logistics providers have very outdated onboarding processes. Andreas and his team impressed us with a very short proof-of-value when we introduced them to 4 potential customers in our network. We liked the execution power driving the founders, as well as their positive reception within the Join network, which unanimously recognized the potential added value of how.fm for their daily logistics operations within minutes.”
Andreas Andersson, EMEA Safety Lead at Ingram Micro, says: “how.fm helps us overcome the language barriers our company faces daily. The CMS system allows us to quickly create training material that we can use for everyone in our facilities, regardless of the type of employment or country of origin. The fact that we can test the knowledge of every trainee also helps us greatly with compliance. An excellent system that is easy to implement, set up, and use.”