Kenyan Digital HR Manager WorkPay Raises $2.1 Million Seed Capital to Drive Growth

Kenyan startup WorkPay, a digital human resource management (HRM) and payroll solution provider, has amassed $2.1 million in seed funding to accelerate its development.

Having invested $100,000 in WorkPay in 2019, Kepple Africa Ventures oversaw this funding round which also involved contributions from YCombinator, P1 Ventures, Soma Capital, Musha Ventures, and other angel investors.

WorkPay had recently taken part in the 3-month Silicon Valley-based YCombinator accelerator programme W20 and obtained $150,000 in funding after graduating as part of the program.

The company can now further extend its reach and speed up its growth in key areas after successfully raising $2.1 million in its latest funding round.

Founded in 2017 by Paul Kimani, the Nairobi-based startup was formerly known as TozzaPlus before it rebranded in 2019 as WorkPay. Its focus is to offer human resource management solutions via enterprise resource planning (ERP).

WorkPay operates a cloud-based system which allows small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa to fully access, monitor, process and manage their entire payroll functions for highly effective workforce management.

The company’s cloud of digital data, stored and processed on a network of remote servers hosted on the internet rather than on local servers or personal computers, gives greater flexibility such that user businesses can easily access salary payment information and remotely approve time-dependent payroll processing at their own convenience.

WorkPay’s platform currently caters to more than 250 SMEs and performs payroll processing for more than 20,000 employees in Kenya.

It also offers a robust payroll calculation tool for businesses to estimate hourly, weekly, biweekly, monthly or semi-monthly salary payment options for staff members working for different durations.

Through the WorkPay website or app, SMEs can easily carry out otherwise tedious tasks including managing employee leaves, generating key responsibility areas (KRAs) reports and evaluating employee performance by entering key performance indicators (KPIs).

A self-service portal is also featured on the startup’s web and android app that allows the employees under the SMEs to carry out a number of functions. The startup doesn’t have an iOS app yet. Employees can edit and verify all their personal details as well as view and download pay-slips. They can also request for a salary advance, staff loans, leaves and small cash amounts.