Meeting and event planning platform Bizzabo has raised $138 million in a Series E round of financing, the company announced. This recent round brings the company's total funding raised to $194 million since Bizzabo's 2012 founding as an event app.
The company began to expand its services in 2015 and now offers planning for in-person, hybrid and virtual events, charging an annual fee to use its software-as-a-service platform and a per-registration fee, according to a company spokesperson. More than 80 percent of its customers are corporate enterprises.
Bizzabo plans to use the funding to invest in its platform and capabilities, and intends to hire during the first half of 2021 more than 100 new employees globally, according to the company. During that time, it also plans to open two new offices in Europe to expand its market operations and triple its engineering, product and experience teams. The company currently has more than 175 employees in its New York, Tel Aviv and Kyiv offices.
"Our platform has seen unprecedented demand this year," said co-founder and CEO Eran Ben-Shushan in a statement. "Compared to the year prior, the number of events organized through us has grown 65 percent. Additionally, the number of attendees registering for events with Bizzabo has grown over 500 percent, while overall usage is up 150 times."
In October, the company introduced the Partners Management Solution, which allows organizers to consolidate operations into a single portal for a simplified process for sponsors and exhibitors, as well as the Speakers Management Solution, which enables planners to collect content, review task submissions, streamline speaker coordination and manage correspondence in one portal. Both integrate into Bizzabo's main platform and allow users to customize the portals to reflect an event's branding.
The new round of funding was led by Insight Partners with participation from previous investors Viola Growth, Next47 and OurCrowd.