After Growing 391%, Legion Locks Up $50M Series C To Manage Workforces

Redwood City, California-based Legion closed a $50 million Series C to try to help companies find the right balance between workforce and market demand as the world emerges from a pandemic.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

The new round was led by Stripes, and included participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, First Round Capital, XYZ Ventures, Webb Investment Network and Dollar General. The company has now raised a total of $85.5 million.

The Series C comes just nine months after the workforce management software developer closed a $22 million Series B. The decision to raise again was easy after the company grew 391 percent in the last year.

“We saw such a great opportunity with how this product and market is expanding,” said Paul Melchiorre, operating partner at Stripes.

Managing workers

Legion was founded five years ago by Sanish Mondkar, also the company’s CEO. With a background in enterprise software, Mondkar was drawn to workforce management.

“Labor always has been interesting to me,” he said. “The scope and volume is massive and it impacts people’s lives.”

The company’s platform uses AI to help businesses in labor-intensive industries such as retail, distribution, manufacturing, hospitality and food services to manage their workforces — helping to figure out when employees are needed, while also generating schedules and communicating with employees.

More than 20 mid-sized and large enterprises with more than 500,000 employees are on the platform, Mondkar said. Many of the employees on the platform are hourly employees — without even a work email — so being able to engage on the platform is crucial, especially during times like last year when the pandemic caused massive shifts in the need for labor, he added.

Although estimates of the market can vary, Saagar Kulkarni, a partner at Stripes, said they estimated the market for workforce management in North America alone to be $5 billion.

While there are several incumbents that help companies manage labor such as Kronos, Blue Yonder and Reflexis, Mondkar said he views Legion’s platform as a next-generation solution in a market that is desperate for innovation.

“This market has not seen the kind of innovation we are bringing in quite a while,” Mondkar said.

Melchiorre said that technology combined with the market size could lead Legion to become a very special company.

“We invested thinking this could be a large public company approaching $1 billion in revenue,” he said.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.