China HR SaaS player Beisen raises $260m

SoftBank Vision Fund, Goldman Sachs, Primavera Capital, and Fidelity International were the lead investors. Various existing backers, including Matrix Partners China, Sequoia, Genesis Capital, and Shenzhen Capital Group, re-upped.

The company raised over $100 million in Series E funding in 2018 and claims to have tripled its valuation in the past two years, achieving unicorn status in the process, according to a statement. This has coincided with rapid business growth - sales rose by more than 100% in 2020.

Beisen serves over 6,000 medium to large-sized enterprises, with a net dollar retention rate (NDR) in excess of 110%. Its software covers the entire recruitment and retention cycle, including qualification and performance reviews, attendance management, payroll, employee welfare, and training.

These services are available across nine cloud-based groups that sit on the same platform, enabling wholesale outsourcing. Beisen developed China's first low-code platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering with HR attributes. Low-code systems provide basic building blocks that allow users to create apps quickly and easily.

David Ji, co-founder and CEO of Beisen, believes that the era of isolated HR software is ending. The future will be defined by integrated and low-code products that unify different data streams and facilitate meaningful analysis. Low-code not only means speed; it also offers more scope for customization and autonomous development of different functions.

“Your employees just need one gateway, and your organization just needs one platform, one suite of solutions, and one supplier,” said Ji. “This is the value of an integrated HR SaaS system to clients.”

Beisen claims to have overtaken traditional international software vendors, occupying top spot in the industry for five consecutive years. According to iResearch Consulting, China's HR SaaS market will be worth RMB7 billion ($1.1 billion) by 2023, with annual growth exceeding 40% in recent years. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend by emphasizing the importance of HR digitalization.

Other HR SaaS players that have received PE funding include WorkTrans, which raised $190 million across two tranches in January, and GaiaWorks, which closed a RMB500 million Series D extension last December.

Beisen was founded in 2002 and received funding from Shenzhen Capital Group and Tianjin Venture Capital in 2010. Matrix and Sequoia joined the next two rounds, which closed at $10 million and $17.8 million in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

AVCJ Research’s records show that Tianjin Venture Capital and other investors committed $2.91 million in 2017, shortly before Genesis and Matrix put in $26.1 million. The Series E was led by Matrix and Genesis, with Sequoia also participating.

China Renaissance served as the exclusive financial advisor for Beisen's latest round.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• enterprise software
• China
• Softbank
• Goldman Sachs
• Sequoia Capital
• Matrix Partners
• Fidelity
• Shenzhen Capital Group
• Primavera