We’ve raised $14.5m to build the employee benefits infrastructure for the internet

We’ve raised a $14.5m Series A from Eurazeo, bringing our total raised to more than $22m with existing investors EQT Ventures, Northzone, and Frontline Ventures doubling down, and participation from 9Yards and Plug and Play Ventures.

Central Bank of Ireland Licence

Alongside our Series A, we’re also excited to announce we’re now licensed by the Central Bank of Ireland as an insurance intermediary. This makes us the only insurance benefits platform with regulatory approval across the EEA and the UK, giving us greater control over the experience we offer customers.

Benefits are broken

When we founded Kota in 2022, we set out to make core benefits, like Pensions and Health Insurance, work for the modern workforce. We realised back then that benefits were not just inefficient; they are fundamentally broken, outdated and inadequate, posing a real issue to a whole generation. They were hard to access and manage for companies, and under appreciated by employees.  

Benefits live mostly offline, fragmented across email, portals and PDF files, with intermediaries like brokers taking fees and slowing down the movement of data. This creates an inaccurate and painful experience, making benefits the 2nd biggest time drain for HR teams.

The harsh reality of this is that hundreds of millions of people don’t get access to basic benefits like Pensions and Health Insurance. 99.8% of European companies have less than 500 people, and 22% of their employees work remotely - so making global benefits infrastructure accessible for lean, growing companies is crucial.

Two-thirds of employees don’t understand the benefits they’re being offered, and 40% of them don’t even consider benefits part of compensation. It’s not their fault - the traditional benefits onboarding experience involves an email with a link to a PDF about what they’re being offered, and not much more. 

The result of all of this is frustrated employers going through a herculean effort and excessive cost to roll out benefits that their employees don’t end up using. Everyone is trying their best, but the system is broken, and the technology is not there to support them. 

Rolling out benefits shouldn’t be a thankless task - we believe everyone deserves much better.

It’s time to raise the bar

We believe in a future where getting your team covered is simple, real-time and delightful – and this is only possible with integrations directly into the insurance carriers. It should just work. It’s either interoperable with your HR and payroll tools or it lives in your HR and payroll tools. 

In the last few years, we’ve built the rails to bring the industry online by integrating carriers to remove costly intermediation and making complex, regulated processes work end-to-end in one platform. Today, we support hundreds of companies, tens of thousands of employees, and power benefits for platforms like Remote and Helios.

Our Series A

Our Series A is just another step in the right direction and a testimony to the progress the team has made. We’re excited to welcome Eurazeo and Elise Stern to the team. Elise has been close to Kota for a while and has an unbounded energy and curiosity for this space.

Our existing investors, EQT Ventures, Northzone, and Frontline Ventures, have doubled down on this round, and we’re lucky to have the support from a group who have passionately been with us since pre-seed and seed.

We’ve also added some amazing angel investors from some of the biggest names in HR tech, fintech and insurance, and count ourselves lucky to have them on our side.

Accelerating to build the future

We’re expanding our reach of insurance carriers to more markets, ensuring our customers can access the best cover, no matter where they are. We’re deepening our focus on our core products to build the best experience on the planet to empower and support our customers. 

Finally, I wanted to thank our incredible customers who share our vision for the future of work - we wouldn’t be here without their trust and feedback. I also want to thank our team, who are obsessive and relentless about this mission, and care deeply about building the best product in the world.

If you’re interested in joining us and looking to do some of the best work of your career, we’re hiring on all fronts.