The seed round was led by Decibel with participation from industry angels to advance user-centric security technology.
"Employees want flexibility and they need the right tools to be productive, but those tools aren't always company-approved. So, they're signing up for those tools on their own. Security teams want to assert some control over this because SaaS apps introduce risk to their company, so they often try to simply lock down SaaS. However, in the long run this just encourages employees to work around the security team. You can't secure SaaS that's owned by employees without working with employees. We've built a lightweight, scalable way to let employees use SaaS responsibly, guiding them to actually fix security issues, while offloading work from security teams. We'll prove along the way that employees don't need to just be seen as part of the problem, but can actually become part of the solution."
The Series A round was led by Stage 2 Capital with participation from Samaipata and existing investors.
"Effective pre-employment screening and candidate vetting are critical considerations for business operations, compliance, and risk management. Yet, around the world, these processes are highly manual and often delayed, inaccurate, or incomplete."
The oversubscribed seed round was co-led by firstminute Capital and Playfair to support product expansion and international growth.
"Instead of yet another freelancer platform that simply digitizes transactions that could and would happen without it, Passionfruit is bringing a completely new workforce to the market. Gen Z will represent 27% of the global workforce by 2025 and it has been so inspiring to see our specialists as they say goodbye to the Victorian-age structure of the 9-5, and begin a new life working on their own terms. Better still, companies love working with them this way. Smart businesses are realizing that there’s a more elastic and efficient way to manage their relationship with talent."
The funding follows successive investment rounds supported by angel networks and regional accelerator programmes.
"This is an overwhelming amount of money and we are thrilled to be able to continue with our new product development. It is very exciting to have such a wide range of investors both from the North East and across the UK, not to mention the RAIA funding – we have a lot of people backing us on this journey."
