Queensland-founded SafetyCulture raises $30 million in quest to improve workplace safety

A Queensland-founded startup has secured $30 million in series B funding, making it one of the largest rounds closed by an Australian tech company this year.

SafetyCulture, which has created workplace safety and management apps iAuditor and more recently Spotlight, has been acquiring a heavy hitting client portfolio that includes major corporations Coca Cola, Hilton and Qantas.

Global venture capital firm Index Ventures led the series B round.

Blackbird ventures and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar, who led SafetyCulture’s series A, also participated in this round, which takes the total capital raised by the startup to more than $40 million to date.

It’s a feat SafetyCulture founder and chief executive Luke Anear never imagined achieving when the business started.

“It was two of us working in a garage,” Anear tells StartupSmart.

“We were just hoping someone would download our app and use it.”

Today, SafetyCulture’s iAuditor app enables more than 1 million workplace inspections a month and the ongoing growth is expected to skyrocket as Anear uses the new investment to bolster up its product and engineering teams.

“It has taken us four years to get to 75 people, we’ll probably go to about 150 people over the next 12 months,” he says.

SafetyCulture operates out of Australia, the US and the UK.

“It will increase our velocity, it means we can build more things quicker as our customer base keeps growing,” says Anear.

“We’ve constantly had to grow and learn. Every six months, it’s a completely different company.”

This article was first published by StartupSmart.