The London start-up provides insurance and benefits for independent and gig workers, such as sick pay or accident coverage.
It launched last year and is now active in 20 markets. It said it has 250,000 users on its service and it works with platform companies like food and grocery delivery outfits Wolt, Just Eat and Weezy.
This latest investment comes just a few months after it raised €7 million from NFX. Chief executive Anthony Beilin said that Collective Benefits plans to invest heavily in expanding its team and expanding its presence globally while also developing more localized features for those markets. It currently operates in several European countries as well as Israel and Japan.
“I want to support the biggest platforms in this space, I think to do that we need to be able to support them where they operate,” Beilin said.
Collective Benefits, he added, has no immediate plans to enter the US market.
“I think a lot of the European-centric operators are typically operating in the European Union, MENA, APAC or LATAM and Africa. Less are going from Europe to the US,” he said.
“The US has typically a much stronger homegrown market, Doordash, Intsacart, Lyft, primarily US-focused businesses, which means you have to have a hyper local presence in the US, particularly California. That has both cost implications and focus implications.”
Among Collective Benefits offerings are insurance for gig workers and sick leave pay for workers that are otherwise in precarious and unstable working conditions, such as food delivery.
Changing regulatory environments in some countries have spurred some companies to begin implementing benefits and insurance programs. Last week Glovo began a campaign to roll out benefits for all of its riders.
“I think we’re seeing worker wellbeing and social impact are the top of the business agenda and I think that made companies more focused, and keen to fix the challenges that we can support on,” Beilin said.
“The policymakers and legislators and courts should actually be encouraging the provision of protection and insurances and wellbeing support for workers regardless of the employee model that they choose to participate in. I think that will go a long way to helping bridge the social contract gap that we’ve seen fractured by the ongoing proliferation of digital platform work.”
