Privately held shares in global volunteer management platform Rosterfy have risen 14 per cent after a follow-up investment from Bailador Technology Investments (ASX: BTI), which has tipped an extra $3 million into the Melbourne-based company that currently has more than three million users worldwide.
This compares to 1.5 million users when Bailador invested $9.8 million into the scale-up in April 2023, with Rosterfy now used in 35 countries and adding a new country and language each quarter, with translations already existing in Arabic, Spanish, Russian, German, French and more.
"We’ve enjoyed our partnership with Bailador over the last 18 months since their initial investment, and we’re thrilled that they are continuing to support our future growth ambitions," says CEO Bennett Merriman, who co-founded Rosterfy in 2015 alongside Shannan Gove and Chris Grant.
The trio featured in the Australia's Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs list this year, and have been selected as finalists in the 2024 Melbourne Young Entrepreneur Awards taking place on 17 October.
The solution was initially built as an internal resource to support Gove and Merriman's event staffing company Spark Event Group in its own casual workforce scheduling requirements, but they soon realised the broader potential and brought in Grant to further develop the system.
The platform is used by a diverse range of organisations globally from nonprofits to governments to sporting federations, and in FY24 alone it signed up such clients as British Heart Foundation, Habitat for Humanity International, OzHarvest and SXSW.
Rosterfy celebrated its one-hundred-millionth volunteer hour in June this year, of which 20 million took place in FY24.
Another recent milestone has been the launch of its Rosterfy Volunteer App as organisations increasingly aim to target a younger demographic in a volunteering sector where roles have been traditionally fulfilled by people in the 55-plus age bracket.
"Rosterfy is the most comprehensive and customisable volunteer management solution on the market, utilised by the world ‘s largest volunteer programs. As globally recognised leaders in our field, it is incredibly important that our product sets the standard for world-class volunteer engagement," says Gove.
"Revolutionising the way organisations interact with their volunteers, our user-friendly, secure and engaging platform has allowed clients worldwide to invest in their volunteers, with tangible results reflected in high recruitment, engagement and retention rates."
Prior to the latest update, ASIC documents showed Bailador had an estimated 56 per cent stake in Rosterfy. The latest ASX filing shows its investment had risen to $12.4 million before the revaluation, which notched it up a further $1.7 million, while the additional $3 million injection takes its stake to $17.1 million.
"Rosterfy continues to perform well, growing rapidly and signing up new clients around the world," says Bailador co-founder and managing partner David Kirk.
"This additional funding will help the company expand their global go-to-market teams, and further accelerate their product roadmap to extend their product leadership."
Today's announcement marks Bailador's fourth investment in the past five months, including $7.7 million in fitness studio software company Hapana in August, $20 million in digital investment platform DASH in July, and $20 million in telehealth startup Updoc in May.
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