Zira raises US $3.1M for its shift-scheduling service

Zira designs and develops the world’s best employee management solutions. At the core of Zira is robust AI that helps predict demand, and create schedules that organizations and employees both love.  The company’s employee applications allow your team to maintain preferences that Zira’s scheduling assistant can use to keep your team running smoothly. The startup provides software that helps businesses schedule their hourly workforce in a more intelligent manner.

US based General Catalyst  and Abstract Ventures led the round, which also saw participation from a number of angel investors. This is the company’s first known investment, according to Crunchbase data.

The technology that Zira  sells can automatically set team schedules, taking a task that can be rife with favoritism or bias and making it a bit more standardized. Its service can also handle clocking in and out for workers, and provides a chat feature to help groups of workers stay in sync. Most interesting of all, Zira’s platform also allows for automation, allowing managers to create triggers to replace missing staff for a shift, or provide rewards to the workers who come top in a category, like attendance.

The funds will allow the company to scale its development team, “hone” its product and work on its sales function.

The company started with a product that was meeting customer expectations and winning deals against incumbent platforms, but now it wants to really differentiate itself. Hiring more developers (with the funds raised) should help the company move more quickly in that direction.

On the sales front, after depending on referral or local connections to secure customers, COVID has made those channels difficult. That means Zira needs a more traditional sales function, and capital.