Venture Capital in Australia: Deputy raises $37m and becomes a Unicorn!

After nearly going bust during Covid, Deputy has joined Canva, Go1, Pet Circle , Linktree and SafetyCulture - achieving unicorn with an investment of $37m at a $1.1b valuation from Express Employment Professionals, a global staffing and labour hire company who was a customer of Deputy.

This has made founder Ashik Ahmed a happy man together with investors Square Peg, EVP, and US investors IVP and OpenView.

In 2018, Deputy raised $111 million led by US investor IVP, which valued the company at $423 million.

What Deputy does

Deputy have built a truly extraordinary platform that automates a broken and manual workflow for more than millions workers in over 100 countries helping them communicate, engage , onboard and organise their rosters.

Businesses onboard hourly workers via a mobile app and conduct employee engagement surveys after their shift ends.

The company also created a communication tool, similar to Slack, that allows shift workers and managers to share information easily.

Ashik was first exposed to the need for better organisation of shift workers as a 16-year-old immigrant from Bangladesh, when he was flipping burgers at Hungry Jack’s.

He founded Deputy in 2008, alongside entrepreneur Steve Shelley. Ashik stepped aside as CEO a year ago to bring in San Francisco-based Silvija Martincevic and Joins Steve Shelley on the board.

Silvia told the AFR that Deputy are focused on the impact that they can achieve in the shiftwork community, which remains an underserved community despite being the most substantial.

She said that there’s no better validation of a company’s mission and what we’re doing than having a customer who decides to invest in you.

So who is Express Employment Professionals?

EEP have more than 860 franchised locations across Australia, America, South Africa and New Zealand, and will add more than 500,000 new users to Deputy - a 36 per cent increase to its current 1.4 million global user base.

Deputy investors love them!

Paul Bassat of Square Peg told AFR that this investment would provide Deputy with the firepower to continue to invest in the growth of the business.

Howard Leibman of EVO says “I've had the privilege of working with Deputy since we were a team of 20, and of serving on the Deputy Board since 2016. Whilst it’s taken some time to exceed the $1 billion valuation, the fact that Deputy would one day be a unicorn was for me never in doubt.

The business serves one of the world's largest markets - the many hundreds of millions of hourly paid workers - who have long been under-served by software and for whom technologies such as Deputy have life-changing impact.

Through the Express Pros partnership alone, a further 500,000 hourly workers will have access to Deputy over time. Express Pro's material investment into the business speaks to Deputy's extraordinary long term prospects as we take on the US market.

A huge congrats to Silvija Martincevic and the entire Deputy team on this milestone achievement. But in so many respects we're only just getting started!!”