based in Singapore skuad helps companies hire employees in different countries, while complying with local employment regulations and processing cross-border payroll. The startup announced today that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Skuad has hired more than 350 employers to date, mainly from North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.
This funding round, bringing Skuad’s total to $19 million, included participation from recurring investors Beenext and Anthemis. It was led by a Southeast Asian venture capital fund, along with a US strategic investor specializing in personnel, and two leading global payment platforms.
Skuad was conceptualized just before the 2019 pandemic by founder Sundeep Sahi with the aim of simplifying international hiring. Since then, the company’s focus has been on helping employers solve problems that make building distributed teams challenging, such as variations in regulations from market to market, international payrolls and remote onboarding. Skuad also serves as a platform for employees to find work.
Sahi told londonbusinessblog.com that traditional recruiting and recruiting methods are not enough to create a team of people around the world.
“To build or hire distributed teams in another country, you need to set up a subsidiary, register as an entity, open local bank accounts, stay abreast of local labor laws and local HR, legal and payroll teams hire. This process often takes months, if not years, and requires an investment of thousands of dollars,” he said.
Skuad allows companies to hire, onboard and pay employees and contractors in more than 160 countries without the need to establish local entities, and it manages local compliances and also offers country-specific benefits and insurance packages. Most of its clients are from the technology and consulting industry who employ digital workers across geographies to fill a talent gap or scale internationally.
The startup now has clients from 34 countries, talent placed in approximately 94 companies and 3x growth in ARR since January 2022.
One of Skuad’s clients is Indonesian fintech Akseleran, which had to fill technical gaps. It built a strong candidate funnel through a vetted talent portal called allremote.in, social job networks, recruiters and agencies. Skuad is the legal employer in India, as Akseleran has no legal entity in the country, and manages the local compliance for payments, taxes and benefits.
Skuad makes money with pricing plans that start at $199 per employee per month for payroll and $499 per employee per month for talent found through the platform or 12% of the employee’s compensation, whichever is higher. The company is currently finalizing its acquisition of Codejudge, a data-centric talent assessment platform that automates technical interviews, to expand its recruiting and onboarding capabilities.
Some competitors in the remote rental space are Share, Remote, Globalization Partners and Multiplier. Skuad acts as a hybrid of talent platforms, such as Turing and Toptal, but with a focus on full-time remote jobs enabled by the network of local entities that handle payroll compliantly, such as Share and Remote. Sahi says it stands out for its process transparency and the size of its tech-enabled talent platform, which can be used to manage the entire work lifecycle.