Singaporean HR tech startup hits $100m valuation in 4 years

From dealing with growth ceilings and coping with cash flow shortages to just being constantly tired, being an entrepreneur is both rewarding and frustrating. That’s why the last thing a business owner needs is to worry about is managing employee payrolls on long, tedious Excel sheets and organizing stacks of photocopied travel and medical claims. After all, work is already stressful enough as it is.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Pascal Henry, co-founder and CEO of HReasily, faced when he founded his first venture back in 2011. “When I was running an executive search consultancy in Singapore, I had to manually do a lot of the processes myself,” Henry recalls. “I felt the pain… it took out [a lot from] me when I should have been focusing on building my business instead.” What’s worse was the fact that the available solutions on the market at the time were either still in beta stage or too costly.

So just like the entrepreneur he is, Henry decided to solve the problem himself.

HReasily co-founder and CEO Pascal Henry (front) with Ng You Zhi, Envy Asset Management’s managing director / Photo credit: HReasily

In July 2015, Henry co-founded HReasily, a cloud software that automates human resources processes – everything from payroll, staff management, and leaves to contract templates and attendance monitoring. Based in Singapore, HReasily now has a presence in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia.

The platform itself consists of several different modules. Here’s a quick look at what they are and how they work:

• Payroll: Handles the employee paysheet, taking into consideration government policies, regulations, and contributions across different markets
• Staff: Stores all personnel information, such as profiles, contracts, and employment histories as well as includes the Leave feature, which manages employees’ leave credits and tracks public holidays
• Claims: Deals with all sorts of claims, from medical to transportation
• Time: Essentially acts as a digital time card that can be integrated with legacy bundy clocks and thumbprint machines

In July 2019, HReasily also added a benefits management module. Currently in beta, it will offer insurance programs, healthcare packages, loans and cards, which in turn helps employers enhance talent acquisition and retention.

HReasily isn’t just for the HR department, either. There’s also an HReasily app for employees, which allows them to check their payslips, apply for leaves, submit claims, clock in and out of the office, etc.

In terms of pricing, HReasily operates on a monthly or annual subscription model. And since each module can operate as a standalone application, clients can pick and choose the solutions that best suit their budgets and needs.

A free version of HReasily is available as well. This option allows businesses “to get a feel for how the platform works and do a risk-free test drive of the payroll module,” Henry explains. “As their business grows, customers can expand on the utility of the platform by adding modules to address other aspects of HR management such as leave, claims, and time and attendance.”

Up against the big players

Companies applying digital solutions to everyday HR processes is nothing new. However, according to Henry, many products out there continue to operate in silos. This means that there’s a particular system for payrolls, another for leaves, and a separate one to handle claims. Learning and operating different platforms can be a headache, and the cost of running them all at the same time is substantial once you do the math.

This is not to say that no one has tried to consolidate these solutions under one roof. In fact, many major players in the HR tech space, such as SAP Success Factors, Workday, and ADP, have done just that, according to Henry. However, these companies have mostly adopted an all-or-nothing approach to their HR solutions – customers have no choice but to purchase the whole platform at a steep price. The cost might be a drop in the ocean for large corporations, but that might not always be the case for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

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