WorkPay Africa, a Kenya-based provider of Cloud-based HR and payroll solutions and services for SMEs has been accepted into the latest cohort at the accelerator program Y Combinator and also secured $150,000 (Kshs 15 million) in seed funding.
Since it was set up in 2005, the US-based seed accelerator Y Combinator has seen over 2,000 companies launch including known brands like Paystack, Flutterwave, Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart and Dropbox among others. The combined valuation of the top Y Combinator-funded companies was estimated to be over $155 billion as of late 2019.
WorkPay was founded in 2018 as TozzaPlus to provide SMEs with Accounting, CRM, HR and Payroll services. It was later rebranded to WorkPay in June 2019 with a change in product and strategy to focus on the provision of employee management and payment processing services and solutions.
Before joining Y Combinator, WorkPay had closed on early-stage funds from Pangea Angels 1 and Kepple Funds.
The company is currently processing monthly salaries for over 10,000 employees drawn from private security firms, cleaning and sanitation companies, building and construction companies, ICT firms, microfinance institutions among others thereby reducing payroll processing time from 5 days to less than 1 hour, with the biggest benefit being in the form of reduced costs and inefficiencies associated with payroll and employee management, savings of between 5% to 10% within 3 months after coming onboarding to WorkPay as well as facilitating financing of payroll shortfalls.
WorkPay was also selected to pitch at the Oslo Innovation Week after making an appearance at the Pangea Accelerator Demo Day.
Twice every year, Y Combinator invests about $150,000 in a select number of promising startups. Executives from the selected startups then move to Silicon Valley for 3 months, during which time Y Combinator works intensively with them to get the companies to refine their pitch to investors. Each cycle culminates in Demo Day, when the startups present their companies to a selected, invite-only audience.
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