Helsinki-based Happeo raises €25.4M to solve information chaos at fast-moving businesses: here’s how

Helsinki-based Happeo, a company that enables better communication and information flow within an organisation with the help of a social intranet platform, announced on Thursday that it has raised $26M (approximately €25.47M) in a Series B round of funding.

The investment was led by Endeit Capital, Smartfin and Evli Growth Partners. The round also saw participation from Happeo’s existing investors INKEF Capital, Maki.vc and Vendep Capital, among others. 

Rajeev Suri, the former CEO of Nokia, Mikko Kuitunen, the founder of Vincit, and Ari Korhonen, an angel investor, also invested in Happeo.

Capital utilisation

The company says it will use the funds to invest in its product and development teams, and in further expansion in North America, while retaining its position in its home market of Europe.

The investment strengthens Happeo’s position as a leader in solving information chaos in the workplace and also enables the company to accelerate its expansion. In a time when businesses need to centralise their knowledge more than ever, Happeo says it will be able to grow its social intranet platform further.

Perttu Ojansuu, CEO and Founder of Happeo, says, “We are delighted with the progress we have made so far – the speed and strength of our growth worldwide. This latest funding enables us to realise our vision of creating a new, better world of work at scale. We have been improving our platform, and this funding means we can take our revolution in the intranet space to the next level.”

Here’s how Happeo is changing workplace communication

Happeo provides businesses with a “virtual headquarter” that centralises knowledge and information, ensuring that employees have all the information they need to execute their “best” job and, in the process, establish relationships and a good culture.

This is important because, in the current scenario, the average company uses 110 SaaS tools, up from just eight in 2015. According to management consulting firm Mckinsey, an employee spends 19% of their workweek searching for information to get their job done. Any company’s message volume increases dramatically as its personnel and market environment change, this can lead to information chaos. That’s where Happeo steps in to make a difference.

Founded in 2017 by Antero Hanhirova, Perttu Ojansuu and Vesa Sironen, Happeo is the intranet that fast-moving companies use to connect their teams with the knowledge, news, and tools they need to do their best work. The company’s solution offers a window into the information that’s scattered across those 110 tools, so team members don’t need to guess where to look. 

The platform claims to decrease search time exponentially through its Federated Search functionality, which enables users to search across all internal tools, and by offering companies a place to host all files and documents in context. Through these tools, Happeo makes it easier for teams to interact by removing the burden of sharing critical updates from instant messaging applications.

The company is a long-time Google partner, and its most recent product version also integrates Microsoft 365. Due to the new Microsoft connectivity, Happeo is now able to assist all organisations, regardless of whether those organisations utilise Google Workspace or Microsoft Office 365.

Currently, Happeo has more than 350 customers across all industries, including market-leading companies like Pinterest, Doctolib, Hotmart, Decathlon, and Marqueta.

About the investors

Endeit Capital is a growth capital firm that claims to be accelerating internationalisation and innovation since 2006. With local partner teams in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, Endeit specialises in boosting European tech scale-ups that have outgrown the startup phase. Over the years, the firm has raised €0.6B in investment capital.

Jelle-Jan Bruinsma, Partner at Endeit Capital, says, “In this era of hybrid and remote work, Happeo’s tools are needed more than ever. Companies have a pressing need to simplify their internal communications, and we have seen that companies that do this well perform better over the long term.”

Another investor in Happeo is Smartfin, a private equity fund targeting growth technology companies with offices across Belgium and the UK. Smartfin leverages its expertise for its portfolio companies and accelerates the scaling and monetisation of their growth.

Lead round investor in Happeo, Evli Growth Partners, is a Finnish venture and growth capital fund that invests across industries primarily in the Nordics and Europe. The fund is led by five serial entrepreneurs with experience in founding, managing, or investing in over 150 companies. EGP has made investments in companies like TIER, Refurbed and Perlego.