US gifting platform Sendoso to establish Irish operation after raising $100m

Sendoso, a US company that has developed a popular gifting platform that allows business to send presents to clients and staff, is to establish its European headquarters in Dublin.

The move comes after the company confirmed it has raised $100 million in a funding round led by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.

The company currently has over 500 employees across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific, and intends to increase its workforce by 30 per cent by year-end. Much of the increase in new roles will be based out of Dublin

Chief executive and co-founder Kris Rudeegraap told The Irish Times he was not in a position to say exactly how many people the company expects to take on locally, but said "Dublin will immediately be our fastest growing location".

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"We're going to be focused on engineers. It is a huge goal for us to hire more of them. We're also seeing that Dublin is a good central location for an inside sales team selling across Europe," Mr Rudeegraap said.

He also indicated there would likely be roles in supply chain, sales and marketing and customer success.

“We’re hiring and if you want to work for one of the fastest growing start-ups, Sendoso is the place.”

The new Dublin facility will include a dedicated logistics and supply chain operation to further support the company's 20,000 global users from customers, which include Comcast, Kimpton Hotels, Thomson Reuters, Nasdaq and eBay.

Founded in 2016, Sendoso allows businesses to send gifts to employees, customers and others with products such as personalised presents, branded swag and so on. Overall, the company has up to 30,000 gift options available.

Sendoso has raised over $150 million to date, with the latest funding round led by Softbank, which has also backed the likes of TikTok parent Bytedance, FlipKart and WeWork.

Mr Rudeegraap said transactions had surged during the Covid crisis, and are expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

He added that the platform would be looking to include more Irish partners shortly.