Pandatron raises nearly $700K pre-seed round with its AI coaching solution
Finnish startup Pandatron has announced the closing of its pre-seed round supported by investors from Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the US. The startup team raised $680.000 for their change management AI-driven conversational coach. Taking the AI chatbot's role to another level, Pandatron's solution effectively improves change management, enabling one-on-one interaction with every employee on the changes and delivering data-based input to the managers.
The field of change management is gaining more attention in today's constantly evolving environment. Companies need to keep up with market preferences and, at the same time, appropriately interact with their employees regarding the changes. Insights by Gartner suggest that approximately half of the current change initiatives fail, and only about a third have an evident success. On top of that, nearly 75% of organisations expect to scale up the number of significant change implementations across their companies in the next three years.
Transforming the change management methods
Startup Pandatron transforms the way companies execute changes by developing an AI conversational coach. The Pandatron AI chatbot coach gives attention to every change-affected employee personally, in the form of weekly 1:1 conversations. Moreover, the technology helps the users reflect on the changes and set goals that will help them adapt to them.
Pandatron's solution becomes affordable and easily implementable by complementing human experts with AI chatbots and integrating them in commonly used Slack or Teams. The technology then provides valuable insights to the management about the issues and risks related to the change, enabling the right focus and saving a crucial amount of time and resources.
"My life changed in 2014 when I attended a conference focused on developing self-awareness. I still believe that all our societal problems stem from a lack of self-awareness. Pandatron starts with a niche; change in corporations. Our mission is to make the ROI of investing in people 100x and reestablish HR as a valid and profit-making corporate function," says Dima Syrotkin, CEO at Pandatron.
Pandatron's potential is recognised internationally
Pandatron already cooperates with global companies such as Universal Pictures, SAP, and KONE and plans to expand its presence further across the change management field.
The startup received support from investors in Finland as well as abroad. The current investor list includes VC funds Gorilla Capital and AI Startup Incubator and investors Reetta and Janne Rajala, Martin Ostermayer and Dirk Freise , Maurice Eisenmann, Ria Parppei, Timo Hentunen, Zhao Hanbo, and Oki Tag.
In addition, Pandatron gained attention at one of the biggest European startup conferences, Wolves Summit 2021, where the team met one of their last investors, AI Startup Incubator. The startup became one of the finalists at the event's competition, The Great Pitch Contest, and won a special pitching opportunity sponsored by AISI, ultimately turning it into funding.
"We believe Pandatron has hacked the coaching formula to improve employee welfare, motivation, and growth in our modern world. Pandatron provides a solution that allows all the employees to have their personal coach, effectively guiding them through a growth path individually and consistently," says Angelo Burgarello, Business Director & Partner at AI Startup Incubator. "In a world where employees are more and more left alone in their daily routine, I see Pandatron making a huge positive impact for virtually any kind of organisation, from small to corporate!" continues Angelo.
"With 20 years in helping corporations succeed in their changes and transformations, I am delighted to see a breakthrough solution easing the workload of managers and at the same time enabling employees to understand, accept and commit to the behaviors required by the change initiatives. Pandatron provides an excellent addition to the palette of change implementation methods," says Reetta Rajala, Advisory Board Member at Pandatron.
"Martin and I have been very impressed with the vision of Dima to expand coaching techniques to middle management at scale. Coaching has been a privilege for far too few people for too long. Pandatron's AI solution has the power to change this," continue Dirk Freise and Martin Ostermayer, investors of Pandatron.
Risto Rautakorpi, a Managing Partner at Gorilla Capital, adds, "Pandatron is the outcome of an evolutionary journey in search of a product-market fit. The systematic focus on the needs and wants of the customer has yielded a product customers love and which generates measurable results. Pandatron has a lot of potential to be realised."
