Indonesia-based staff management platform Vara raised $4.8m in seed funding from Go Ventures, the investment arm of super app Gojek, as well as RTP Global, Alpha JWC Ventures, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, FEBE Ventures and Taurus Ventures.
Surge, the accelerator program of Sequoia, recently picked the startup as part of its fifth cohort.
The startup, which mainly caters to small and medium-sized enterprises, plans to use the fresh funds to boost product development and build more value-added features for its clients and their employees.
Established last year by former Grab executive Vidush Mahansaria and his fellow Wharton School graduate Abhinav Karale, Vara targets SMEs in labour-intensive sectors such as food and beverage, retail, and construction. The company currently has over 100,000 small companies as clients and launched its first app in November.
Called BukuGaji, the Indonesia-focused app helps business owners track staff attendance, tabulate salaries and loans, generate payslips and disburse payroll in just a few minutes. There’s also a specific app that allows employees to mark attendance and check their salary. More than 100,000 small businesses are already using Bukugaji.
The businesses Bukugaji serves often have workers who are unbanked, meaning they don’t have access to a bank account or traditional financial services. Vara’s founders say many of them live paycheck to paycheck and this means they sometimes have to take out loans from their employers.
In the near future, Bukugaji will add time-saving features like automated allowances and overtime, dashboard shortcuts, reminders and customizable reports. It also plans to allow employers to disburse salaries directly through the platform. Over the longer term, Bukugaji will offer data analytics to companies and their workers. For example, employees will also be able to see how their earnings have changed over time. Employers, meanwhile can spot trends in attendance and salary.
Vara is similar to India-based PagarBook in India, which got $15m in a Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital India in December 2020. Bookkeeping platforms such as Khatabook and OkCredit have also rolled out their own staff management apps.
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