Madrid-based Jobandtalent, which matches workers with temporary roles, has raised €100m from SoftBank, amid an upsurge in the need for workers in the ecommerce and delivery sectors. 

The company, launched in 2009, also secured €83m in debt financing from BlackRock. Previous investors include Atomico, Seek, DN Capital and InfraVia, with the startup’s total funding now at €310m to date, with a €88m round in December last year.

Jobandtalent offers an app and online marketplace for workers to find temporary roles.  It employs them directly and manages the administrative processes including payroll, timesheets and legal compliance. 

The company also provides workers with healthcare in some markets, advance pay and training, pensions, and sick and holiday pay.

There are currently 80,000 workers and 850 companies using the platform, including Santander, Sainsbury’s, eBay, Ocado and logistics groups CEVA and XPO.

Juan Urdiales, cofounder and CEO of Jobandtalent, said the company hopes to give more security to temporary workers, by giving them continuous employment — through back-to-back temp contracts. 

“Historically, people stayed in jobs for much longer than they do today. Now, there are more than 500m people around the world in temporary work,” Urdiales told Sifted. “We started Jobandtalent to try and give these workers more security.”

“The past year of the pandemic has dramatically impacted the labour market around the world,” he says. “Ecommerce, logistics, warehousing and manufacturing have all done well — creating many more jobs that we are able to offer workers on our platform.”

The company doesn’t specifically cater to gig workers, but its model, attempting to give more security to flexible work, comes as companies within the gig economy are looking for new ways to structure their employment models. 

There’s Uber, for example, which has been told by courts in the UK, Spain and Italy that its drivers should be classed as workers, prompting a re-evaluation of how the model works. 

Jobandtalent, which is currently available in Spain, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Mexico, Colombia, and Portugal, will use its funding to expand into new geographies, including the US, Italy and the Netherlands. 

The company’s reports revenue growth from €5m in 2016 to €500m in 2020 — and it has a growth rate of over 100% year on year.

Freya Pratty is Sifted’s news reporter. She tweets from @FPratty