Workpay, a Kenyan cloud-based HR, payroll, and benefits platform for organisations, raised $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Norrsken22, which recently backed NALA and Orca. It also saw participation from Visa, Y Combinator, Saviu Ventures, Axian, Plug n Play, Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, and Acadian Ventures. This follows the $2.7 million pre-series A funding raised last year.
The startup will use the money raised to aid its expansion across the continent and build out its financial services provision.
What challenge does it tackle?
Businesses across Africa struggle with a dynamic employment landscape, navigating diverse regulations, dispersed employees, and hybrid workplaces. Payroll is time-consuming for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), with 80% of SMBs still handling payroll manually on Excel and Google Sheets, but they cannot maintain complex payroll systems. There are third-party solutions, but these come with limited features. On the other hand, software designed for large companies is expensive and complicated to use.
This is where Workpay comes into the picture as it supports African businesses with its end-to-end HR and payroll solutions.
What does the company do?
Founded by Paul Kimani and Jackson Kibigo, Workpay offers a comprehensive cloud-based payroll and HR SaaS platform that manages the entire journey of employees and contractors, from onboarding to offboarding. It includes features like payroll processing, time tracking, leave management, expense tracking, performance management, employee benefits administration, and Employer of record (EOR) services among others. Workpay also helps ensure employee compliance across different markets.
It already has a great foundation with 1000+ businesses across 20+ countries on the African continent on the platform and is looking to provide the future of employee financial services and benefits.
Paul Kimani, CEO of Workpay stated, “Our goal is to become the go-to solution for employers and employees in managing HR, payroll, and work-related benefits. Our deep understanding of regulation across the African continent allows businesses working across multiple countries to manage payroll and tax using a single integrated platform. This raise will support Workpay to reach profitability, a huge milestone for our company.”
Investors’ views
Ngetha Waithaka, General Partner at Norrsken22 said, “Our investment in Workpay offers an exciting opportunity to revolutionise how Africa’s SMEs carry out their employee management. Africa boasts one of the largest working-age populations in the world and they remain grossly underserved by existing HR and payroll tools. With the addition of integrated financial services, Workpay’s potential for growth is immense.”
Thomas Otter at Acadian Ventures added, “We are excited to expand our investment in Workpay. The company has developed the most comprehensive, modern HR and payroll platform and is poised to become the market-leading HR platform across Africa over the next decade.”
Ryosuke Yamawaki, Partner at Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures added, “Over the years, we have witnessed the leadership team’s exceptional business capabilities to evolve a single-industry focused product to a one-of-a-kind platform that cuts across all HR needs of African businesses. We are excited, again, to be part of this round and join the journey to revolutionise how human resource management is supposed to be done in Africa.”
