Skuad secures Series A funding to drive global expansion in helping companies hire, manage and pay talent globally Global employment and payroll platform Skuad makes it easy for companies to hire anyone anywhere, make payments in multiple currencies, and remain compliant while building cross-border teams.
Singapore
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October 20, 2022 07:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Numerous large companies around the world have started to adopt globally distributed and hybrid team structures as part of business growth and expansion plans. However, they are struggling to remain compliant with local employment regulations, process cross-border payroll and find high-quality talent as they hire beyond borders. Skuad, a Singapore-based company that enables global hiring and payroll, announced today that it has raised US$ 15 Mn in Series A funding to help companies like these overcome challenges around building global teams.
The funding round was led by a Southeast Asian venture capital fund alongside a U.S. strategic investor specializing in staffing and two leading global payments platforms. This round also saw participation from existing investors BEENEXT, Anthemis as well other prominent angel investors. This funding follows on from the US$4 Mn seed round in December 2020, taking the total capital raised to US$19 Mn.
The brainchild of Sundeep Sahi, Skuad was founded in 2020 with the singular aim of simplifying the process of finding and managing the right talent while removing the limitations of boundaries. While the pandemic-induced lockdowns and the “work from home” situation enabled the rise of distributed working models and global teams, they also created a unique set of challenges for organizations that were used to a traditional “office” set-up. Skuad enables companies to build global, distributed teams by hiring the best talent beyond borders (without setting up a legal entity). Its array of services include onboarding, payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance (at a fraction of the usual cost and time).
“The way people work and companies hire has changed,” said Sundeep Sahi, Founder and CEO of Skuad. “Our mission is to elevate lives by democratizing opportunities and talent globally. We started Skuad because we realized that talent was everywhere but opportunities were not. With the complexities of hiring in foreign markets and cross-border payments, companies were finding it hard to discover and hire the right talent and build global teams. On the other hand, talent did not have the right discovery platform for finding remote employment that invests and helps them grow in their career rather than working for transactional short term gigs. We want to change this status quo and actively work towards enabling 1 Mn workers to discover the best opportunities globally, work anywhere in the world & get paid anytime in their currency of choice”.
To further its mission, Skuad is also finalizing its acquisition of Codejudge, a data-driven talent assessment platform that automates the tech interview process. On the Codejudge acquisition, Sundeep Sahi added: “Finding the right talent is only half the battle — being able to qualitatively assess, interview and hire this talent is fundamental to the success of talent acquisition and retention strategies. The acquisition of Codejudge will strengthen Skuad’s existing hiring and onboarding capabilities with an added layer of data-driven talent assessment functionalities. Skuad will leverage Codejudge’s robust code-simulation platform and code sandboxes to further enhance its product offerings and scale its acquisition capabilities.”
Commenting on the funding, Dirk Van Quaquebeke, Managing Partner, Beenext, said, “Businesses are beginning to see the advantages of having teams not constrained by borders. This not only enables them to scale teams and enter new markets quickly, but also helps them find and hire the best talent without the need to relocate. As early investors in Skuad, we’ve seen the team bridge the gap between talent shortage and surplus markets. We are excited for this next phase of growth of the business — building global, distributed teams for thousands of customers.”
In the last two years, Skuad has witnessed exceptional growth — with customers across 34 countries (>50% from North America and Europe), talent in 94 countries (>80% from emerging economies) and 3X growth in ARR since January 2022. Further, given Skuad’s affordable pricing plans — starting at US$199 per employee per month for payroll and US$499 per employee per month for talent discovered through the integrated platform — their clients range from emerging and early-stage startups to larger businesses. These companies have built their global teams on Skuad’s platform and are processing over US$120 Mn in payroll and payments worldwide in over 50 currencies. Skuad has also expanded its leadership team with experienced senior hires across all verticals (Product, Sales and Operations), resulting in brand visibility and big client wins in the US and EU in a short period of time.
Remote and hybrid work trends have continued in the post-COVID world leading to a greater demand for digital knowledge workers, especially from the Asia-Pacific region. Evolving digital advancements across industries and sectors has led to the need for diverse and upgraded tech skills. This has resulted in the creation of new technology hubs in the Philippines, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. According to a McKinsey Global Institute article, Asia is expected to account for almost 40% of global consumption and generate more than 50% of world GDP by 2040.
Skuad is built for this new world of work. Together with the funding capital and the Codejudge acquisition, the company plans to strengthen its tech features to scale across global hiring, payments and payroll. It will also continue to build growth functions to further penetrate prime markets and expand beyond current geographies.
About Skuad
Skuad is a fast-growing global employment and payroll platform, which enables large enterprises and emerging start-ups to employ and pay exceptional talent anywhere in the world, compliantly. Skuad is valued and trusted by leading global companies worldwide.
Skuad’s digital employment infrastructure ensures companies can hire, onboard, and pay employees and contractors in 160+ countries, without setting up local entities, on a single unified dashboard. Our legal infrastructure manages all local compliances and provides a range of amazing country-specific benefits and insurance packages.
Contact Details
Skuad
Bilal Mahmood
+44 7714 007257
b.mahmood@stockwoodstrategy.com
Company Website
