Singapore-based Squad helps companies hire employees across multiple countries while complying with local employment regulations and handling cross-border payroll. The startup announced today that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Squad has registered more than 350 employers so far, mainly from North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.
This funding, which brings Squad’s total to $19 million, was led by NMVM and two international payment platforms. In addition to returning investors Beenext and Anthemis, as well as angel investors Jitendra Gupta, founder of Jupiter, Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs; Credit founder Kunal Shah; Indifi Co-Founder and CEO Alok Mittal; Varun Mittal and Rafael Lopez.
Squad Before the pandemic in 2019, the concept was designed by founder Sandeep Sahi to simplify global hiring. Since then, the company’s focus has been on helping employers deal with issues that make building distributed teams challenging, such as market-to-market regulatory differences, international payrolls and remote commuting. Squad serves as a platform for employees to find jobs.
Sahi told TechCrunch that traditional hiring and recruiting methods aren’t enough to create a team of people around the world.
“Building decentralized teams or recruiting in another country requires setting up a subsidiary, registering as an entity, opening local bank accounts, staying up-to-date with local employment laws, and hiring local HR, legal and payroll teams. This process often takes months, if not years, and requires an investment of thousands of dollars.
Squad enables companies to hire, onboard and pay workers and contractors in more than 160 countries without the need to establish local entities, manage local compliance, and offer country-specific benefits and insurance packages. Most of its clients are in the technology and consulting industries, hiring digital workers across geographies to fill talent gaps or imbalances globally.
The startup now has customers from 34 countries, talent deployed in 94 companies and 3x growth in ARR as of January 2022.
One of Squad’s clients is Indonesian fintech Acceleran, which needed to fill technology gaps. allremote.in has built a robust candidate funnel through a curated talent portal of social work networks, recruiters and agencies. Skuad acts as a legal employer in India, as Acceleran does not have a legal entity in the country, and manages local compliance for payroll, taxes and benefits.
Squad monetizes with pricing plans starting at $199 per month for payroll and $499 per month for platform-acquired talent or 12% of employee compensation. The company is currently finalizing the acquisition of Codejudge, a data-driven talent assessment platform to automate tech interviewing, hiring and onboarding capabilities.
Some competitors in the remote hiring space include Dell, Remote, Globalization Partners, and Multiplier. Squad serves as a hybrid of talent platforms such as Turing and Toptal, but with a focus on remote full-time jobs enabled by a network of local entities that honor payroll, such as Dell and Remote Control. Sahi says it distinguishes itself by its process transparency and technology-enabled talent platform, which can be used to manage the entire work cycle.
