Australia's Employment Hero gets $35m Series D

Existing backers OneVentures and AirTree Ventures re-upped, while Salesforce Ventures came in as a new investor, TechCrunch reported in a story reposted to Employment Hero’s LinkedIn account. The Sydney-based company, which is now valued at A$250 million, is looking to continue its expansion beyond Australia into the likes of New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and the UK.

Employment Hero received A$3 million in Series A funding from OneVentures and AMP New Ventures in 2016. OneVentures and Seek led a A$6.2 million Series B in 2018 and were then joined by AirTree for a A$22 million Series C the following year. The latter round reportedly valued the company at more than A$100 million.

Founded in 2013, Employment Hero offers a cloud-based platform that helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage HR, payroll, employee engagement, and benefits. Standard payroll management packages start at A$4 per employee per month, with customers able to add on various premium features. It serves about 6,000 SMEs with an aggregate of more than 250,000 employees.

The company doubled full-time headcount to 200 last year with the launch of localized products for the New Zealand, UK, Malaysia, and Singapore markets. Ben Thompson, Employment Hero’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of employment management software by roughly five years,” as companies were adapted to remote working.

The Global Teams service was launched to meet the changing nature of demand. It is a borderless people management solution that allows SMEs to recruit talent in 54 countries around the world, taking care of different local regulatory and compliance requirements.

Investment interest in Australia’s workforce management space has boomed in the past two years, with some 10 local start-ups receiving significant private equity, venture, and strategic backing. Employment Hero is one of the local leaders alongside the likes of Culture Amp, which has raised $158 million to date.

Last month, there was a significant liquidity event as Ascender was sold to US-based strategic Ceridian for around $500 million. Potentia Capital, which acquired a controlling stake in Ascender in 2015 at a valuation of $25 million, secured an up to 30x return on its investment. A switch to cloud-based services and aggressive geographic expansion underpinned the firm’s value creation efforts.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Expansion
• Technology
• Australia
• OneVentures
• AirTree Ventures
• Salesforce Ventures