https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/10/blink-a-productivity-app-aimed-at-frontline-workers-raises-20m-at-a-100m-valuation/

Apps catering to frontline workers are seeing a surge of interest in the market these days, as businesses finally start to wake up to using tech to better connect with these employees, and investors eye up an interesting and new growth opportunity in enterprise IT. In one of the latest developments, Blink — a startup and app of the same name that provides a platform for frontline workers to use and engage with the various IT services used by their organizations, as well as with each other — has picked up $20 million, a Series A that is being led by Next47, with participation from early investors Partech and TechStars. Blink has confirmed that the funding values it at $100 million.

The startup will be using the capital to double down on growth. Blink was founded in London — where it has found strong traction with metropolitan bus networks (where some 5,000 bus drivers are using the Blink app) and the NHS (where thousands of front-line workers in clinical and non-clinical roles are also on Blink). Those users are very engaged, CEO Sean Nolan tells me, with some 72% of all users opening it on average 13 times a day to check things like pay slips, shift rostering, holiday and overtime pay, to chat with each other and read their company’s latest announcements.