London-based employee benefits and rewards startup Ben announced in February 2021 that it has raised US$ 2.5M in a seed funding round led by Cherry Ventures and Seedcamp. Multiple angel investors such as Paul Forster (founder-Indeed), Taavet Hinrikus (founder-TransferWise), Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas (Partner at Index Ventures), Philip Reynolds (VP of Engineering-Workday) and Matt Robinson (founder-Nested) also participated in the funding round.
David Duckworth and Sebastian Fallert founded Ben in 2019. The startup has developed an employee benefits platform enabling SMEs ( small and medium enterprises) to provide much more tailored and flexible benefits to employees. The startup does this through a SaaS platform for managing benefits, a benefits marketplace, combined with employee debit cards powered by Mastercard. Its main aim is to give employees more individual choices around which benefits they want to choose, while also making it easy to involve additional providers. These providers are added through the marketplace or through whitelisting merchant or merchant groups via the company issued Mastercards, such as food and drink, travel, mobility or a particular co-working space etc.
The Ben SaaS platform empowers companies to load funds and set separate rules and guidelines for using the same. Employees can then select from group benefits, such as private medical insurance, mental welfare services, or dental plans. Simultaneously, a real per-employee Mastercard allows them to use any product or service in a tax-efficient and compliant way.
CEO Sebastian Fallert said the result is a win-win for all as employees get personalized benefits. Companies only pay for what’s used, take advantage of tax immunities and preferred pricing, while simplifying the administration.
The startup’s platform is presently used by small and mid-sized companies, particularly those with a distributed workforce. In particular, the CEO said that these firms have to deal with the increasing complexity of their programs to stay in good terms with a more diverse and increasingly remote team. Ben generates revenue through three modes: a SaaS fee; interchange revenue every time its cards get used and affiliate revenue from its marketplace.
Fallert went on to say that one of their main theories is that there are so many remarkable services out there that can’t get through to companies as they’re often not applicable for all employees, such as debt consolidation or fertility treatment. With Ben, all these problems are sorted since the employee gets what he/she wants, and the company doesn’t have to spend any extra money.
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