Tallinn-based startup Yera has raised €535K in a seed round led by Specialist VC with the participation of Veriff founder Kaarel Kotkas and the former Director of Engineering at Wise Alvar Lumberg. Founded by an Estonian-Brazilian team with diverse experience from Skype, Veriff, Swedbank, and others, Yera gamifies daily work processes to increase the performance of teams in the workplace. The Estonian company will use this funding to expand its client portfolio in Europe, South America, and Asia and grow its team accordingly.
Yera raises seed round to gamify daily work processes
The funding round, led by Specialist VC, will support the expansion of Yera’s employee engagement tool, providing an all-in-one engagement and rewards solution for work teams worldwide.
Yera, an Estonian-based startup that aims to boost team engagement in routine work with custom rewards and unique experiences, has raised €535,000 in seed investment. The round included world-class industry experts and renowned angel investors, such as Veriff founder Kaarel Kotkas and the former Director of Engineering at Wise Alvar Lumberg.
Yera offers a fully automated SaaS platform for increasing the performance of teams in the workplace, which encourages recognition, and employee engagement in essential work processes. The platform does so by leveraging gaming elements, such as earning points for completing routine tasks that the team members can exchange for meaningful rewards they can choose from. With Yera, workplace teams – customer support, sales, developers, and others – can significantly improve their quality of support, upsells, on-time delivery, time tracking, and other critical processes that underpin successful results.
According to Gallup’s 2022 State of the Workplace Report, 79% of people are not engaged at work. Low employee engagement costs the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity, equivalent to 11% of global GDP. Employees often lack the incentive to perform routine tasks efficiently, such as resolving customer issues, making daily progress in sales and software development, promptly logging in their work time, or updating their task status. This presents challenges to project leaders and managers committed to leading the company to success.
Kaarel Kotkas, the founder and CEO of Veriff, commented: “The way Yera helps to connect people with their progress through ongoing feedback in the form of performance-based rewards is unique. This approach perpetuates a motivating work environment that fosters productive teamwork and supports superior business results.”
Yera enables seamless onboarding by providing integration with a wide range of workflow management tools, such as Slack, Zendesk, Trello, Jira, and Azure DevOps. It is the only all-in-one engagement and reward system, and its full automation sets it apart from other employee recognition apps on the market, such as Bonusly, Guusto, and Centrical. Yera provides a one-stop shop for earning points and redeeming awards with its customisable Perk Store that hosts a catalogue of rewards that can be upgraded with custom motivation packages.
Janno Siilbek, the co-founder and CTO of Yera, commented: “The rules of the economy have changed. A new generation of young people has grown up playing computer games. According to research, almost 90% of employees say that gamification makes them feel more productive and happier at work.
Gamification is considered a remarkably potent flow state trigger that can play an essential role in employee retention. Our product successfully combines elementary processes with gamification elements to turn repetitive work tasks into engaging activities.”
Founded by an Estonian-Brazilian team with diverse experience from Skype, Veriff, Swedbank, Inbank, and others, the company is piloting partnerships with global digital innovation companies, such as Helmes and Ambev Tech. The investment will support the growth of the company’s customer-centric product development team and expansion to new markets in Europe, South America, and Asia.
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