The French startup Klara, specializing in the digitalization of employee development monitoring in companies, has just completed a fundraising of 4.5 million euros. Business Cool spoke with Romain Etay and Nazim Chibane, co-founders of this startup, to learn more about their backgrounds and ambitions.
Everything you need to know about Klara
Who are you ?
Hello, I am Romain Etay. I completed a Masters in Finance and Strategy at Sciences Po Paris. Then, I worked as a Finance Manager at Bpifrance. Subsequently, I co-founded Klara with Nazim Chibane and am currently its Chief Revenue Officer (Sales & Marketing).
I’m Nazim Chibane. I obtained a Master’s degree in Finance from IAE. I joined the boostHEAT teams as Finance Manager, where I managed a team of 1 to 100 FTEs. Subsequently, I became Innovation Manager at Bpifrance before embarking on the creation of Klara alongside Romain, where I am in charge of the Product & Operations department.
Klara was born from our meeting during our adventure at Bpifrance. Each of us has noticed to what extent career paths within large groups are worthy of a crossroads! Both passionate about entrepreneurship, the desire to bring a project to life together was quickly born. We considered the obstacles to internal mobility and the retention of talent in companies. It seemed essential to us, to activate an internal mobility process, to know the skills of one’s own employees and that the stimulation of talents requires the implementation of programs to develop talents. To capitalize on the substantial budgets of 402 billion euros spent each year on training to train and retain employees, remain competitive and comply with regulations, Klara responds to the difficulties of companies to measure the impact, while ensuring peaceful employee experience for all stakeholders.
What does Clara do?
Klara deploys a digital solution for monitoring the development of employees in the company. With a user-centered approach, employees have access to a space dedicated to them to create a roadmap for their professional project within their company and manage their development with identified educational objectives. Its collaborative approach allows you to share your progress, particularly with HR, training and managerial teams, in order to then be able to deliver personalized support adapted to your needs. The use of Klara encourages the employee to become an actor in their development, while offering them a point of support and perspective on their strengths and areas for improvement.
Through use cases such as evaluating the impact of training, digitalization of training booklets (integration and retraining), performance management and monitoring of HR initiatives (talent pathways, managers, managers, Hipo), Klara provides a concrete vision of the impact (ROI) of development measures on a company scale. Support from Klara experts ensures engagement on the platform (employee and manager), generates usable data and makes the most of your data to manage and enhance your daily actions. Drawing on its experience with its clients, Klara interfaces with your IT ecosystem (HRIS, LMS, TMS) to offer a complete digital experience. Klara thus becomes the dedicated employee interface, making skills development a strategic and central subject for the company of tomorrow.
Klara’s fundraiser
Why did you raise 4.5 million euros?
First of all, to confirm our ability to scale up, by strengthening and accelerating our development in France and Europe, through the ease of integration of the solution into the IT ecosystem of our current clients. But also to continue to build the friendliest HR tool possible in order to pursue our mission of making the employee of tomorrow the actor in their development in the company.
Why did you choose to bring these investors into your capital?
Klara chose to bring Ankaa Ventures, Side Capital and business angels into its capital.
All of our new and historic investors bring their experience in our sector of activity but also in the development and structuring of fast-growing companies in order to bring Klara to maturity to prepare for the next stage.
What will Klara look like in 5 years?
Our 5-year vision is as follows: to become a collaborative tool on employee development topics by creating a dedicated workplace for all employees. Enable the valorization of acquired knowledge beyond the scope of the employer via a skills passport, but also establish itself as a leading European player in the digitalization of employee monitoring processes. We hope to automate as many HR processes related to the employee experience as possible while guaranteeing personalized monitoring. Our mission is to enable employees to become actors in their own development in the company!
