Skuad, a digital payroll platform for remote teams has raised $4 million in seed financing backed by venture capital firms BEENEXT and Anthemis Group, the company said in a statement.
Other investors in the round include Alto Partners Multi-Family Office and Rohan Monga, CEO of Indonesian edtech company Zenius Education.
While incorporated in Singapore, Skuad describes itself as a global employment platform to hire, pay and manage globally distributed teams. The company itself claims to be fully remote, with employees based in several countries and customers spread across the US, Africa and Southeast Asia.
The fresh capital will be used by Skuad to grow its remote employment infrastructure and scale its growth team in multiple geographies, with demand for services amplified by the impact of COVID-19.
The company believes the pandemic has brought an unprecedented shift in how organisations are building teams and there is significant adoption in hiring talent beyond geographical boundaries, which comes with high-level complexity and compliance risks.
Through its Global Employment Platform, Skuad aims to help employers build and pay their remote workforce seamlessly, without the need to set up local entities. The platform not only automates global payroll, local compliance and taxation but also provides benefits for employees across geographies.
“As an enabler of operationalising distributed teams, Skuad brings in simplicity and seamlessness to hiring while doing away with expansion or capacity constraints. We look forward to being a part of their journey in becoming a global standard for remote working,” said BEENEXT managing partner Dirk Van Quaquebeke.
In Southeast Asia, Skuad is likely to come up against established HR-tech companies, which also offer payroll services, such as Malaysia’s Swingvy, which raised a $7 million Series A round led by Samsung Ventures last year, and Indonesia’s Mekari, which bagged a Series C round last year backed by East Ventures and other VCs.
