As the modern workforce continues to grow with the online setting, Shiftsmart has found a way for their platform to increase growth according to a Dallas Morning News article from December 2. They report,
“Shiftsmart, a Dallas-based tech startup that connects shift workers with employers, has raised $95 million in a new funding round.
The new investment round was led by D1 Capital, and existing investors in the company include Mark Cuban Companies, Softbank, WeWork and Perot Jain — a venture capital firm started by Ross Perot Jr. and Anurag Jain.
Shiftsmart has now raised a total of $117 million from investors. And its total users have grown 50% from the 400,000 reported by Forbes as recently as April.
“We are grateful to our investors for recognizing that Shiftsmart is playing a pivotal role in meeting the overwhelming demand to reduce friction in end-to-end labor management, especially given current macroeconomic conditions,” Kumar said.”
Getting the investors’ trust and confidence as well as getting to where they are now was brought their innovation and unique outlook towards the continuous and increasing customer demand and staff shortages according to a Valdosta Daily Times article from December 2 which reports,
“Today, companies across all industries are struggling to keep up with customer demand due to staffing shortages amidst a tight labor market with record low labor force participation and high employee turnover. Enterprises have made headlines in an effort to attract and retain workers, from implementing interview bonuses to funding tuitions, but still find themselves unable to meet staffing needs. Shiftsmart’s core thesis is that these efforts do not address the fundamental evolution of the modern worker, who prioritizes flexibility and independence over a long-term inflexible relationship with a single employer.
To help employers unlock this modern workforce, Shiftsmart has built a platform that pairs core workforce management software with a network of workers, creating a labor marketplace that matches hourly workers with open shifts across a variety of industry verticals and roles. Through the Shiftsmart platform, not only can workers control their own schedules, but companies can fulfill large-scale, complex, dynamic, and time-sensitive staffing requirements with proven workers. By utilizing Shiftsmart, employers benefit from innovative features that include the ability to flex up and down based on a customer’s staffing needs, access to a global labor pool, reduced friction with end-to-end labor management, increased flexibility and agility, and a quick and easy to use interface.”
At present, many known companies are utilizing Shiftsmart for their respective platforms and Aakash Kumar, CEO and Founder of Shiftsmart matches Shiftsmart with some of these companies according to a CultureMap Dallas article from December 2. In it they say,
“Companies that use Shiftsmart include Apple, Chick-fil-A, Humana, Dynata, Circle K, Airbnb, The RealReal, and the Small Business Administration.
Kumar likens the labor platform to Uber or Airbnb, two pioneers that he said were able to fractionalize assets down to the unit of consumption to expand the market size of their industries.
“In the same way that they transformed cars to rides and homes to trips,” he said, “we fractionalize hourly work down to shifts instead of jobs, thus creating a larger pool of qualified workers and increasing flexibility for both customers and workers alike.”
Recently, the Dallas-based company was one of the finalist in Fast Company 50 World Changing Ideas of 2021: Corporate Social Responsibility and was also named to the 2021 Deloitte Technology Fast 500.