Skuad manages hiring and compliance for building distributed teams

Singapore-based Skuad helps companies hire employees in different countries while staying compliant with local employment regulations and processing cross-border payroll. The startup announced today it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Skuad has signed up more than 350 employers so far, mostly from North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.

This funding round, which brings Skuad’s total raised to $19 million, included participation from returning investors Beenext and Anthemis. It was led by a Southeast Asian venture capital fund, along with a U.S. strategic investor specializing in staffing, and two leading global payments platforms.

Skuad was conceptualized just before the pandemic in 2019 by founder Sundeep Sahi with the aim of simplifying international hiring. Since then, the company’s focus has been on helping employers deal with issues that make building distributed teams challenging, like variations in regulations from market to market, international payrolls and remote onboarding. Skuad also serves as a platform for workers to find employment.

Sahi told TechCrunch that traditional hiring and recruiting methods aren’t sufficient to deal with creating a team of people around the world.

“Building distributed teams or hiring in another country requires you to establish a subsidiary, register as an entity, open local bank accounts, stay up-to-date with local employment laws, as well as hire local HR, legal and payroll teams. This process often takes months, if not years, and requires an investment of thousands of dollar,” he said.

Skuad lets companies hire, onboard and pay employees and contractors in more than 160 countries without needing to set up local entities, and it manages local compliances, well also providing country-specific benefits and insurance packages. Most of its customers are from the tech and consulting industries that employ digital workers in different geographies to fill a talent gap or scale internationally.

The startup now has customers from 34 countries, talent placed in about 94 companies and 3x growth in ARR since January 2022.

One of Skuad’s clients is Indonesian fintech Akseleran, which needed to fill tech openings. It built a strong candidate funnel through a vetted talent portal called allremote.in, social job networks, recruiters and agencies. Skuad serves as the legal employer in India, since Akseleran doesn’t have a legal entity in the country, and manages local compliance for payments, taxes and benefits.

Skuad monetizes through pricing plans that start at $199 per employee per month for payroll and $499 per employee per month for talent found through the platform or 12% of the compensation of the employee, whichever is higher. The company is currently finalizing its acquisition of Codejudge, a data-focused talent assessment platform that automates tech interviews, to expand it hiring and onboarding capabilities.

Some competitors in the remote hiring space include Deel, Remote, Globalization Partners and Multiplier. Skuad serves as a hybrid of talent platforms, like Turing and Toptal, but with a focus on remote full-time jobs that are enabled by its network of local entities that process payroll compliantly, like Deel and Remote do. Sahi says it differentiates with its process transparency and the size of its tech-enabled talent platform, which can be used to manage the entire employment lifecycle.