WorkPay, a Kenyan cloud-based workforce management startup with human resource (HR) and payroll management has secured $2.1 million investment.
WorkPay was founded in 2017 by Paul Kimani with the name TozzaPlus, but was rebranded in 2019 through a $100,000 funding round provided by YCombinator, P1 Ventures, Soma Capital, Musha Ventures, and Kepple Africa which oversaw the funding. The investors are adding $2.1 million to the purse of WorkPay to accelerate its growth
Having participated in a recent three-month YCombinator W20 accelerator programme in Silicon Valley, where it raised $150,000 at the end of the programme, WorkPay is focusing its services on human resource management solutions via enterprise resource planning (ERP).
Each month, it processes transactions worth millions of shillings for small and medium sized businesses. Through an intuitive easy to use solution, WorkPay offers employee management with Time Tracking, Human Resource Management, and payroll processing with bulk salary payments to employees’ bank accounts or mobile wallets.
The co-founder and CEO of WorkPay, Paul Kimani said the fund will be used to expand its services in East Africa.
“This new investment will give us the opportunity to scale our human resource management and payroll processing tools to SMBs and expand to enterprise clients across East Africa. We are fortunate to have the backing of some incredible people on our mission to make it easy for businesses to manage and pay employees across Africa,” he said.
WorkPay currently processes payrolls for over 25,000 employees, covering more than 300 SMEs in Kenya.
Ryosuke Yamawaki, general partner of Kepple Africa Ventures said WorkPlay gave them a positive impression in their first meeting on a pitch day in September 2018, which made them stand out from others.
“They’re different in the way they define their key customers, understand their real pains, and design specific solutions. It is no surprise that they have come this far. They will surely become one of the most successful startups in the continent and drastically change the way the workforce is managed,” he said.
