MOVE Guides Ltd., a London-based startup with San Francisco offices, has raised $15.6 million in a Series B round of funding for an enterprise app that promises to make mobility less costly for companies and easier for employees.
The company helps employers arrange the shipping of household goods, sort out immigration and tax-related matters before an employee moves, and find services that will help employees get set up in a new country. It does so primarily through its closed marketplace, which matches vendors to an employer based on their needs around each specific move.
With talent scarce in local markets, companies are increasingly offering to relocate those it recruits or shuffling existing employees around their world-wide offices. But this can prove expensive for employers and painful for professionals who need to navigate everything from immigration laws to finding a place to live.
Employee mobility increased 25% from 2002 through 2012, a figure expected to increase 50% from 2012 through 2020, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The research from the firm also said that millennials believe working overseas, at least for a few years, in their career is a benefit.
MOVE Guides help companies reduce the cost of mobility on average by 10% and aim to reduce those costs further, founder and Chief Executive Brynne Herbert said.
New Enterprise Associates led the Series B investment in MOVE Guides and was joined by Notion Capital.
Read VentureWire for the full story on MOVE Guides, including what NEA General Partner Ravi Viswanathan expects the company to do with it funding.
[“source-wsj”]