A gamified learning platform reinventing employee upskilling has raised £5 million in a seed round led by AlbionVC.
5Mins AI, billed as the ‘TikTok of workplace learning’, features 15,000+ bite-sized lessons from 150+ educators and coaches worldwide covering 100+ essential technical skills.
AlbionVC was joined in the round by Chalfen Ventures, Portfolio Ventures, Blue Lion Global and Edenred Capital Partners – the venture arm of employee benefits leader Edenred – along with a number of notable angel investors.
5Mins aims to solve the number one cause of employee churn in the last decade – poor growth and development opportunities. HR teams list L&D as one of their most difficult and time-consuming challenges, due to very low engagement from employees.
Online corporate learning course completion rates are between 5 to 20%, whilst monthly engagement rates are less than 10% for traditional workplace learning platforms. By removing key friction points, 5Mins has an average course completion rate of 85% and monthly engagement rate of over 50%.
In businesses where employees are allocated individual learning budgets, less than25% of these budgets are actually used due to time constraints and poor guidance on what employees need to learn.
5Mins’ next-gen learning tool removes these key friction points by presenting workplace learning in a TikTok-style feed and using intelligent personalisation. Complete with gamification, and social features, 5Mins gets employees and teams to stay engaged in learning.
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HR and L&D teams can treat each employee as an individual and automatically offer personalised learning paths which employees can fit in their daily schedules, five minutes at a time.
Since going to market in March 2022, more than 100,000+ lessons have been watched on the platform and 5Mins’ annual recurring revenue has grown 20x. It is used by employees in 80+ countries including Smart Pension and Cushon in the UK.
5Mins was founded by Saurav Chopra – previously co-founder and CEO at leading employee engagement platform Perkbox.
“Our mission is to help companies build a learning culture so their people can unlock their true potential and we have come a long way in a short period of time,” said Chopra.
“We are building the first global learning superapp that companies of all sizes can use to upskill everyone, improve employee retention and drive innovation.”
Nadine Torbey, investment director at AlbionVC said: “5Mins sits at the crossroads of two massive shifts: employee engagement on one side and ‘TikTokisation of everything’ on the other. The impressive commercial momentum and next level user engagement the company has been experiencing in a short amount of time is testament that the market is craving for more personalised, engaging learning tools.
“Saurav has a lot of experience in the space which makes him uniquely well placed to disrupt this large broken market. We are so thrilled to be partnering with him and the whole team to achieve this ambitious vision.”