TROOP, a company that creates technology and services for business meetings throughout the world, has revealed that it has raised $11 million (about R201 million) in Series B funding to grow both its local and international presence.
TROOP wants to hire three times as many people in South Africa by 2023 and have a global team of 170 people by 2025. Leonard Cremer, one of the co-founders of TROOP, said, “TROOP’s growing presence in South Africa comes at a very important time.”
“The South African economy is expected to improve, and the country’s meetings, incentives, conferences, and events (MICE) business is likely to grow dramatically over the next year.”
“Since we started TROOP in South Africa in 2021, we’re looking forward to putting down deeper roots in the country and making our products and services more available across the continent.”
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TROOP’s technology platform enables businesses to plan, book, expense, and manage logistics for in-person meetings, addressing the move towards a distributed team environment and the rising demand for group meetings. Their customer base includes both start-ups and well-established multinational corporations.
Henry Ellenbogen, managing partner and chief investment officer at Durable Capital Partners LP, which led the Series B funding round, said, “As firms become increasingly hybrid or even totally remote, having meaningful in-person connections becomes more challenging than ever.”
“I think TROOP is at the forefront of how the workplace is changing quickly and is well-positioned to add value for businesses planning in-person meetings in a more distant environment,” says the author.
Meeting preparation is made more complicated by 60% of firms’ hybrid working environments. South African TROOP staff work remotely full-time, and the company has offices in the US, UK, and Spain.
Steve Singh, executive chairperson of TROOP and managing director at Madrona, said, “A portion of this investment will be allocated towards the continued growth of TROOP’s technology, customer success, and sales teams to support the broadening international footprint and rapid expansion across South Africa, Europe, and the US, and to deliver and launch TROOP: One, the company’s end-to-end meeting management platform due to launch later this year.
The Troops: One platform will grow to include booking, meeting management, and meeting expenses. This will be made possible by deep technology integrations with best-in-class service providers like Spotnana, Centre, and others. This will improve the customer experience and workflow for corporations planning in-person meetings.
Singh said that TROOP had turned meeting planning into a self-serve platform that optimizes meeting planning based on corporate goals like travel time, locations, flights, lodging, cost, CO2 reductions, and others.
“TROOP meets its need with a platform that is easy to set up, can be used by anyone, and now uses local experts and skills to create unique meetings and events.”