SeamlessHR secures $10 million in Series A funding for its next phase of growth and regional expansion.
The Nigeria-based startup that uses cloud-based human resources (HR) and payroll software wants to assist African businesses “exploit the continent’s greatest asset: plentiful human capital”.
The financing was led by TLcom Capital, a pan-African venture capital firm.
Capria Ventures, a new investor, joined current backers Lateral Frontier Ventures, Enza Capital, and Ingressive Capital.
The company’s brand solution is a cloud-based, end-to-end HR software that assists firms in managing and streamlining their whole human resource procedures and workflow.
Its product range includes HR management systems, performance and competence management, HR analytics, leave management, payroll administration, and recruitment management.
CEO Emmanuel Okeleji and CTO Deji Lana didn’t build SeamlessHR from the beginning.
It was four years after various prototypes of Insidify, an aggregation site for job searchers and a review site for companies that they established SeamlessHR in 2017.
To establish its name, the business initially signed a couple of smaller enterprises.
However, as time went on, it began to focus on larger clients, and its first major business customer was a bank.
The company claims that its enterprise-grade solution is suitable for a wide range of businesses.
They range in size from small organizations with fewer than 100 people to huge corporations with more than 10,000 employees, including multinationals and banks like PwC, AXA, and Sterling Bank, as well as startups and investment firms like Flutterwave and TGIGroup.
After 4 years of managing wages for hundreds of firms, SeamlessHR has amassed a wealth of human resources and payroll data.
Because sitting on top of such data allows SeamlessHR to build even more vertical goods, the company will provide embedded finance products for employees.
This is how it will work: For example, if a company uses SeamlessHR for its 5,000 employees, any of them can use the platform’s earned wage access to obtain their salaries up to the point they’ve worked.
It’s a common wage structure in places like the United States, but it’s uncommon in Nigeria.
“We leverage finance, technology, and HR to assist people to convert their employment into collateral to obtain safe credit,” said the CEO, who believes the company’s cash advances will appeal to employees more than “predatory” loans given by other lending companies.
Newer businesses, such as YC-backed Workpay and Bento have entered Africa’s payroll and HR management sector.
They assist firms with wage distribution, taxes, and pensions, carving out a niche in what looks to be a sector dominated by SeamlessHR.
In Africa, putting together an HR solution takes longer than in developed countries, where most small businesses can afford to pay for software.
Large corporations, not SMEs, have the most opportunity in Africa.
They are the majority of SeamlessHR’s customers because they have more purchasing power and a greater need for HR solutions.
SeamlessHR has also eaten into the market share of legacy and “on-premise” systems like SAP and Oracle, which are commonly used by large businesses in their local markets.
Companies now realize they may focus on setting up and onboarding cloud-based software solutions capable of servicing their demands, although at a lower cost, rather than hiring staff who need qualifications to administer software.
SeamlessHR’s replacement of these old systems in Nigeria is also aided by software localization.
The fresh capital will bolster the company’s position as “Africa’s top cloud HR and payroll platform,” according to the company.
On the call, Okeleji, who formerly worked as an investment banker and as a doctor, stated that SeamlessHR would expand its operations to eastern and southern Africa, with Kenya and South Africa serving as operating centers, resulting in the hiring of additional workers.
Nigeria and Ghana are the company’s current locations.
SeamlessHR intends to expand its embedded financial capabilities and introduce new features, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence, data analytics, and machine learning.
According to Okeleji, SeamlessHR will eventually expand beyond human resources and payroll into other areas that keep businesses running.
He also alluded to the likelihood of SeamlessHR expanding outside Africa into other global markets, using India’s Freshworks as an example.
“Right now, we’re developing software to optimize HR, but in the future, we’ll expand beyond HR.”
We’re also in a good position to establish a worldwide SaaS business since SaaS solutions cross the world faster than, say, fintech.”
“We’re beating multinational competitors in our local market, and we know we can play this game globally.”
