Singapore-based startup Skuad has just raised fresh capital amounting to $4 million in a Seed round headed by Singaporean Venture Capital firm BEENEXT and the Anthemis Group. Other investors included Rohan Monga, the CEO of Zenius Education, and Alto Partners Multi-Family Office. Skuad plans to use this fresh capital by investing in the growth team who will be located in different regions geographically and continue working on developing their remote working infrastructure.
Since its founding in 2019, Skuad has quickly found its place as companies all over the world are forced to go remote. This digital payroll platform was co-founded by a group of talented and experienced individuals who had shared experiences when it came to handling remote teams scattered all over the globe. The founders are Sundeep Sahi, former Chief Product Officer at Brand Networks and ex-Microsoft; Naman Singhal, former CEO of AppStreet, a mobile application development company; and Dave Fall, former CEO Brand Networks and formerly with Google.
Through their experiences, they all had to set up legal entities in whatever countries their employees were based and ensured that remote compliance was done. This is when they decided to create their Global Employee Platform.
“With Skuad, we are on a mission to enable companies to build teams with global talent quickly while opening up amazing opportunities for top talent to realize their dreams to work for startups as well global companies even if they are not geographically co-located,” says Sahi, the company’s Chief Executive Officer.
The company is based in Singapore but counts itself as a global company. Skuad’s team is currently composed of 90 employees who all work fully remotely across several different countries. Their platform is being utilized by companies in Southeast Asia, Africa, and North America.
The timing of this fund couldn’t be more perfect as companies all over the world have been forced to have their employees work remotely due to lockdowns and other restrictions that have kept most limited in movement for most of 2020. Due to travel restrictions, other companies also had their employees start working remotely. With all of the adjustments these companies have made, Skuad saw an opportunity to ease the burden of different companies when it comes to some operational procedures.
Organizations worldwide no longer look at geographical boundaries as criteria for hiring employees. They are now able to take in highly skilled workers from all over the world who can work remotely. However, when hiring in other countries, companies will need to consider several nuances in financial and labor laws and take note of the different compliance risks to make it all work.
Aside from properly distributing payroll to a company’s employees all over the world, their platform also takes into account the rules and regulations a specific country would need for them to run, and also consider the local taxes that need to be paid. One of the more impressive features is how it also includes different benefits for the employees. Skuad’s platform enables businesses to adjust and build their new remote work infrastructure by giving them the option to pay these remote employees with ease.
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