Kenyan startup WorkPay secures $2.1m seed funding in a round led by Kepple Africa Ventures

Kenyan HR and payroll startup, WorkPay, Africa, has secured US$2.1 million in seed funding in a round led by Kepple Africa Ventures.

Other investors who participated in the round include Y Combinator (WorkPay recently took part in the Silicon Valley-based accelerator program), Soma Capital, Musha Ventures, P1 Ventures, and a number of angel investors.

WorkPay is a human resources management and payroll solution for small and medium-sized businesses in Africa.

The platform has time tracking and salary disbursement tools that help African businesses save money and time by removing ghost workers from their payroll and inefficiencies associated with cash payments.

Speaking on the use of the fresh funds, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of WorkPay, Paul Kimani said, “This new investment will give us the opportunity to scale our human resource management and payroll processing tools to SMBs and expand to enterprise clients across East Africa.

General partner of Kepple Africa Ventures, Ryosuke Yamawaki said, “We are fortunate to have the backing of some incredible people on our mission to make it easy for businesses to manage and pay employees across Africa.” Adding that the moment his team first met with the WorkPay team during a one-on-one pitch day in September 2018, it was clear they were different from anyone else they had met in Nairobi.

“They’re different in the way they define their key customers, understand their real pains, and design specific solutions. It is no surprise that they have come this far. They will surely become one of the most successful startups in the continent and drastically change the way the workforce is managed,” he said.

So far, WorkPay processes payrolls for over 25,000 employees in Kenya and has more than 300 small and medium-sized businesses on its platform.

The startup was founded in 2017 as TozzaPlus but rebranded in 2019.