The founders of Sequoia Capital-backed Pattern have rebranded and altered the main target of the enterprise, elevating one other $2.4 million Seed spherical from new traders within the course of.

As Pattern, cofounded in 2021 by former Seize staffers Jascha Zittel and Elliott Gibb, the startup raised $920,000 in pre-Seed funding, led by Sequoia Capital India, in December 2021.

Their authentic thought was to be “LinkedIn for important employees”, and a “profession HQ” for sectors comparable to hospitality, retail, warehousing, transport and logistics, trades, and private care providers.

However it seems that thought didn’t ship the traction they hoped for, and final yr the startup modified tack and identify. It’s now Mercu, a worker engagement platform for the “deskless workforce”, which automates workforce communication throughout onboarding, coaching, and shifts by way of the chat apps corporations already use, together with Whatsapp, SMS/iMessage, and LINE. The corporate is engaged on introducing FB Messenger, Kakao, and Telegram to its platform.

Sequoia Capital India as soon as once more backed the revamped startup’s new imaginative and prescient in its Seed spherical, with Steve Baxter’s Queensland syndicate fund, TEN13, 500 International, Flying Fox Ventures, Archangel Ventures and XA Community additionally chipping in.

The premise behind Mercu is that 99% of office communication instruments are constructed for desk-based workers, and when corporations began utilizing them for employees not a desks through the Covid pandemic, they didn’t work.

“These makeshift options had been prohibitively costly, required electronic mail logins and complicated implementations, had horrible cell UX and had been constructed for tech-savvy customers,” the startup says on its website.

“They weren’t reduce out for the geographically-scattered, time-poor deskless employees. So we determined to construct Mercu. A cutting-edge answer to simplify deskless jobs and making them much less hectic.”

Mercu additionally allow managers to run month-to-month pulse checks and engagement surveys by way of chat to measure worker satisfaction, alongside automating check-ins, 360 opinions and efficiency stories.

The Sydney software program startup counts Mexican quick meals chain Guzman y Gomez and African B2C market startup Kapu amongst its buyer base.