SeamlessHR raises seed round from Lateral, Consonance, Ingressive, and Enza Capital

SeamlessHR, a Nigerian startup providing all-in-one human resource management service, has closed a seed round with four local and foreign investors for expansion across Africa.

Lateral Capital and Consonance Investment Managers led the seed round, while Enza Capital and Ingressive Capital were participating investors. Although the exact amount raised is not disclosed, the seed round is reportedly a seven-figure investment. That means SeamlessHR raised between $1 million and $9 million in the seed round.

Considering the size of the cheque each of the four investors usually cut and what they have invested in the past, SeamlessHR seed round could be pegged at $7.4 million. This figure is arrived at using the upper class limit of the four investors' cheque.

Lateral Capital, an American venture capital firm with offices in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, makes debt and equity investment ranging from $250,000 to $5 million. Although how much Consonance invests in startups is undisclosed, the Nigerian VC firm has invested up to $1 million in its portfolio companies.

Enza Capital Management, which is based in Nairobi, Kenya, makes seed investment of up to $1 million in technology companies operating in sub-Saharan Africa. And Ingressive Capital invests between $200,000 and $400,000 in early-stage startups.

In March 2019, SeamlessHR had also received a pre-seed investment of $150,000 from Tofino Capital. Then, the chief marketing officer, Seye Bandele, said the funding would be used to double down on expansion in Anglophone Africa and support marketing efforts.

Seye also noted that Tofino's investment is a prelude to a bigger funding tranche. Venture Platform Fund, which invests between $20,000 and $200,000 in startups, is also an investor SeamlessHR.

2/2 "We have what we can call the first-mover advantage in the enterprise HR SaaS space in Africa", SeamlessHR CEO Emmanuel Okeleji said.

"This round of funding will help us consolidate on this advantage and scale operations quickly across the continent".

— Benjamindada.com, tech blog (@dadabenblog) October 30, 2020

SeamlessHR was launched in 2017 by Dr Emmanuel Okeleji (CEO) and Deji Lana (CTO). It was a direct pivot from Insidify.com, which had been operational for four years before then.

SeamlessHR CEO Dr Emmanuel, who was also the CEO of Insidify, described the predecessor of SeamlessHR as "Africa's 1st social job site". Insidify works like "Google for jobs", he said.

"It collates jobs opening from all major Nigerian job sites, company career pages, newspapers and classifieds so that anyone can search for all Nigerian jobs from one place".

Since its launch three years ago, SeamlessHR has garnered clients in Nigeria and Ghana. And it is described as the "productivity machine of the continent" and "Workday for emerging markets".

"Our software helps HR managers and companies to find good candidates out of a pile of applicants, onboard them and manage all HR-related activities, including HR information, payroll, performance, workforce planning, succession planning, time off, and learning and development", Dr Emmanuel said.

"We have what we can call a first-mover advantage in the enterprise human resources software-as-a-service space in Africa. This round of funding will help us consolidate on this advantage and scale operations quickly across the continent".

Dr Emmanuel told Disrupt Africa that he believes SeamlessHR has the potential to become a unicorn.

"If you ask any staff of SeamlessHR what the five- to 10-year goal of the company is, you will get a short four-word answer: 'to be a unicorn'", Dr Emmanuel said.

"We believe that the opportunity to help businesses optimise their resources, people, finances, and materials with innovative cloud SaaS technology is big enough to support this goal and we have found in our investors the right companions for the long haul".