Gojek’s investment arm joins $4.8m round of Indonesian staff management startup

Vara, an Indonesia-based staff management platform, has raised US$4.8 million 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.

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.

Vara founders Vidush Mahansaria (left) and Abhinav Karale / Photo credit: Vara

Established last year by former Grab executive Vidush Mahansaria and his fellow Wharton School graduate Abhinav Karale, Vara targets SMEs in labor-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 pay slips, and disburse payroll in just a few minutes. There’s also a specific app that allows employees to mark attendance and check their salary.

“For such a long time, labor-heavy segments have been underserved. It’s quite difficult to validate their income because there’s no formal documentation of it,” Mahansaria told Tech in Asia.

Interestingly, SMEs can use BukuGaji for free. Mahansaria sees staff salary as a core data point that can be monetized by using it to build other products and services.

As an example, he cited how financial services such as health insurance and cash advance loans can be developed on top of the app. BukuGaji can also track workers’ employment histories and records, and give insights about supply and demand for labor.

Vara is similar to India-based PagarBook in India, which got US$15 million 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.

Mahansaria said that the biggest challenge for Vara right now is to build an app that’s simple to use but also sophisticated enough to cater various industries and geography. “Human resources is a sector that has a highly customized workflow. There are various kinds of overtime and salary components across companies,” he explains.

Vara currently has around 20 employees, and all of them are in tech-related roles. Surge, the accelerator program of Sequoia, recently picked the startup as part of its fifth cohort.