Singapore workforce management solution start-up StaffAny announced Thursday that it has raised $3.4 million in its Series A funding round.
This investment was led by GGV Capital, with participation from East Ventures, FreakOut Shinsei Fund, Far East Ventures, Farquhar Venture Capital and prolific business angels such as Allen Shim, the former Chief Financial Officer of Slack, StaffAny said in a statement.
It also said it will use this new investment to grow the company, expand regionally and develop new features for its workforce management solution.
“Due to social distancing requirements and work from home stipulations, the current pandemic has accelerated the need for digitalisation of workforce management. Companies are increasingly aware how such tools enable them to scale efficiently, as well as generate data that improves operations and increases profits,” said Janson Seah, Co-Founder of StaffAny.
StaffAny helps businesses in the blue collar workforce optimise their operational scheduling, time tracking and human resource (HR) end-of-month timesheet consolidation. With StaffAny, businesses can improve their performance and efficiency, while cutting operating costs.
StaffAny is supported by NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of the National University of Singapore, incubated at BLOCK71 Singapore and founded by a team of alumni from NUS and the NUS Overseas Colleges programme.
“Despite the pandemic, last year, we managed to increase our geographical reach to seven countries. In 2021, our workforce management solution tracked over 11 million employee hours and helped to save more than 350,000 man hours,” said StaffAny Co-Founder Eugene Ng.
Last year, StaffAny updated their workforce management solution to ensure it supports businesses struggling with COVID-19 regulation issues. This includes an integrated workflow with TraceTogether (in Singapore) and MySejahtera (in Malaysia), for easy clock-in compliance and contact tracing of employees, testing reminders for staff to conduct their ART tests, as well as updates on staff’s vaccination status.
In 2021, StaffAny also upgraded its workforce management solution to further increase operational efficiency and support customers’ revenue goals. This included adding new features to improve operational efficiency, such as Auto-Scheduling, where best staff are scheduled into empty shifts, based on customisable criteria and rules, as well as Sales-based Scheduling, which allows managers to allocate manpower to meet sales targets and sales per labour hour.
Moving forward, to improve its core solution, StaffAny will develop a new product, in the area of Employee Engagement, to help businesses improve employee performance and retain valued employees. It is currently test-bedding this solution, and any businesses keen to explore are invited for early access. It plans to scale its team this year and expand beyond Singapore, specifically targeting Malaysia and Indonesia markets.
“We are proud to back StaffAny, as they empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to manage their hourly workforce. Despite food and beverage being the worst-hit industry by COVID-19, StaffAny saw strong growth and unprecedented adoption among the SMEs, a testament to its product and the resiliency of its leadership team. Server Message Block (SMB) tech is a sector GGV invests in globally. We are excited to work with StaffAny as they expand and scale,” said Jixun Foo, Global Managing Partner at GGV Capital.
Co-founded in Silicon Valley and Singapore in 2000, GGV Capital is a global venture firm that invests in local founders. With $9.2 billion under its management, it has investments in the United States, Canada, China, Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and Israel. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV Capital invests in seed-to-growth stage companies across three sectors: Social/Internet, Enterprise Tech, and Smart Tech. Over the past two decades, it has backed more than 400 companies around the world, including Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Big Commerce, Boss Zhipin, Grab, HashiCorp, Hello, JD MRO, Keep, Kujiale, Manbang, NIU, Opendoor Technologies, Peloton, Poshmark, Qunar/Ctrip, Slack, Square, StockX, Udaan, Wish, XPeng, Zendesk, and more.