Workmate co-founder Mathew Ward steps down as CEO

Workmate co-founder and CEO Mathew Ward / Photo credit: Workmate

Mathew Ward, co-founder of blue-collar staffing platform Workmate, is leaving his CEO post, he said in an announcement on his LinkedIn page. The move comes over eight years after he co-founded the startup, and less than two years after it was acquired by Japanese HR conglomerate Persol Asia Pacific.

Ward tells Tech in Asia that he “will be stepping away entirely and won’t have a role with the business moving forward.” After Ward’s departure, managing director Andrew Senduk will lead the business side, while head of product Andriano Winatra will lead tech and product.

According to Ward, both Senduk and Winatra will report to Takayuki Yamazaki, CEO of Persol Asia Pacific.

“The problem we have worked to solve is an incredibly hard one – to change the way the blue-collar labor market operates in Southeast Asia,” Ward wrote in his post. “We have not achieved the mission yet, but we have come a long way – employing over 100,000 workers and paying out close to US$100 million in wages to workers since we started.”

Headquartered in Singapore, Workmate started offering its staffing services in Indonesia and Thailand in 2016. Using its proprietary AI-powered algorithm, the platform matches pre-screened workers to companies.

The startup began as a job-matching platform but eventually pivoted into offering staffing services. Workmate’s website lists the likes of Foodpanda, eFishery, Fresh Factory, and Carousell as clients.

Workmate has raised almost US$20 million in disclosed funding from investors like Wavemaker Partners and Gobi Partners. Its acquisition – reportedly for an eight-figure US dollar sum – came amid the tech winter in October 2022.

In his LinkedIn post, Ward shared the company almost “died” three times, having less than two weeks’ worth of cash on two separate occasions.

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