Exclusive: Acquiring MyRobin the first of BetterPlace’s SEA plans

BetterPlace, a SaaS and workforce management platform headquartered in India, has acquired Indonesia-based MyRobin for an undisclosed amount.

While the latter raised a pre-series A round late last month, BetterPlace bagged US$40 million as part of its series C round in December 2022.

BetterPlace co-founder and group CEO Pravin Agarwala / Photo credit: BetterPlace

Back in 2021, BetterPlace announced it was looking to invest US$15 million to US$20 million to enter Southeast Asia. “Now we are looking at investing north of US$50 million in Southeast Asia in the next three years,” Pravin Agarwala, co-founder and group CEO of BetterPlace, tells Tech in Asia.

MyRobin caught BetterPlace’s attention for a number of factors, one of them being its “leadership position” in Indonesia, says Agarwala.

Launched in 2020, MyRobin grew 14x in revenue in 2021 and turned profitable in June last year.

The Indonesian firm provides on-demand, pre-screened frontline workers on a long- and short-term basis to companies like Shopee, Astro, SiCepat, eFishery, and Kopi Kenangan. Founded by Siddharth Kumar and Ardy Satria Hasanuddin, the firm has over 3 million workers as part of its community.

“BetterPlace is building a better place for blue-collar workers. And MyRobin very strongly believes that the problem in this industry is that workers don’t have consistent jobs and access to financial systems and upskilling so they are stuck,” says Kumar, talking about his firm’s alignment with BetterPlace.

He also points out that BetterPlace has built a system over the years that’s worked well in India. “And because India and Indonesia are quite similar in nature, we can bring that to Indonesia, localize it, and elevate ourselves from the competition,” adds Kumar.

Agarwala says that MyRobin’s team overall adds to BetterPlace’s global ambitions. “We aren’t seeing BetterPlace just as something for Indonesia but also something that could be from Indonesia for Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, or Vietnam.”

Elaborating on Agarwala’s words, Kumar says that the problems in Southeast Asia’s blue-collar markets, both from a B2B and B2C perspective, are very similar. He believes that the processes and infrastructure set up by MyRobin can be replicated in other emerging markets via digitalization.

While BetterPlace has plans to expand to the Gulf region as well as Latin America and Africa, Malaysia is likely to be its next port of call in Southeast Asia.

See more: Blue-collar HR firms rake in revenue, could weather recession

Blue-collar management isn’t the only commonality between the firms. Both of them have their own upskilling platforms – while BetterPlace has Rocket, MyRobin’s offering is called MyRobin Academy.