French startup Swile, previously known as Lunchr, announced today it has raised a $78.7 million (€70 million) Series C round, according to TechCrunch. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Bpifrance and Idinvest. This brings Swile’s total funding to €115 million.
Since 2018, Paris-based Swile has been on a mission to disrupt the meal voucher market. In France, employers typically pay part of the value of these tickets, which can be used at most restaurants. And nowadays, more companies are adopting digital replacements to the old paper meal voucher.
Swile provides one such version of this digital meal voucher via a prepaid card and app. Companies top up employees’ cards each month, and cards can be associated with a person’s bank account. Roughly 200,000 employees across 7,500 companies use Swile right now.
Part of Swile’s new funds will go towards expanding its service internationally. The company says it is looking at Brazil as well as other European countries. Additionally, new funds will go towards offering other non-food benefits to employees, such as reimbursements, gift cards, and events.
Changing up the corporate meal game is something we’re seeing a lot of these days — and with good reason. Thanks to the pandemic, a huge number of employees still working from home, and traditional forms of office lunches, whether vouchers, or catering, have been thrown into uncertainty. Companies have responded with everything from direct-to-consumer meal delivery services for employees to customizable meal plans for virtual sales meetings and events.
As the workforce gets more disparate in terms of location and the state of corporate lunches remains in flux, Swile may be wise to try and diversify its offerings right now.
