Blackbird leads $23m Series B for Australia’s Sonder

Seek Investments, MA Growth Ventures, and secondaries specialist SecondQuarter Ventures also participated. SecondQuarter has historically taken secondary positions in Blackbird’s funds.

Sonder’s app aims to provide a single entry point for employee and student care, including access to an in-house medical team and a ground team said to be able to get to the user’s location within minutes. There is a significant focus on mental health, although the company stresses it offers holistic safety and wellbeing support on a 24-hour basis.

There are nearly 500,000 users across Australia and New Zealand, with clients including Woolworths Group, PwC, University of Sydney, Allianz, Hoyts, Toll Group, roadside assistance provider NRMA, and the New South Wales government. Proceeds from the latest round will support an expansion of the client base internationally, including in the UK.

"The current system is broken. There are too many barriers when seeking support, especially when there are multiple issues at play,” Craig Cowdrey, co-founder and CEO of Sonder, said in a statement.

“This is despite record productivity losses caused by mental health issues in the workplace and the fact that employees are increasingly expecting their employers to make wellbeing a workplace priority. Our research shows that a massive 92% of employees think it’s important for their next employer to offer wellbeing support.”

Blackbird raised AUD 500m for its fourth fund in 2020, claiming at the time that the vehicle positioned it as Australia’s largest VC firm with AUD 1.2bn in assets under management. Previous investments in the local workforce management space include employee engagement app Culture Amp and safety platform SafetyCulture. Both have achieved unicorn status.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Support services
• Healthcare
• Early-stage
• Australia
• Blackbird Ventures
• TMT