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The demand for HR technology solutions is increasing in Africa, and in Senegal Sosium It seeks to exploit the opportunity available in the French-speaking countries of the continent.
Since 2021, Socium has built HR solutions targeting users in 21 countries in French-speaking Africa, and plans to further narrow its focus on the region, where it has a leadership advantage.
Samba Lu, Socium co-founder (CEO), revealed these plans to TechCrunch and told us that the startup has also raised $5 million in seed funding to support its growth plans in the region.
“And for us, the spread within French-speaking Africa is very interesting… Because we have the same economic community, we have very close regulations, we have the same currency, and in addition, the market for HR software is very huge. For these reasons, we prefer to stay In French-speaking Africa, because I think we have a lot to do here. ifwho co-founded the startup with Siren See.
Socium’s solution enables its clients to hire, pay and manage talent. However, this was never what the duo planned to deliver when they first met in 2021.
Lu said they initially started as a recruitment site to enable companies to find talent and for people to find jobs. Then they discovered that the world of HR is huge.
“Our customers started asking us if we had some kind of payroll solution, some time management solution, some performance management solution. As you know, we decided to build a global HR platform to help HR manage all of their processes,” Lu said.
So in 2023 they set out to build a solution that could “work everywhere from Morocco to Cameroon to Congo,” mentioning some of the countries the startup plans to expand into.
For example, the company built a payroll engine that takes into account the complexity of payroll calculations in a region. He says this enables the startup to launch in new countries within two weeks, which is faster than foreign solutions.
The Socium solution automates mundane tasks, reducing the workload on HR and payroll, and uses artificial intelligence, for example, to easily score CVs and match them to job offers and to help write job descriptions. This allows HR managers to focus on more important roles such as managing and supporting teams to achieve their goals.
“Focusing on people means focusing on the performance, their evaluation, their competency and the career path of each individual. For this reason, our primary focus is to continue to help them work and manage their daily tasks more easily and be able to focus on the most important part of HR. I think the part is What matters most to HR is the people within the company.”
As it expands, the startup is also looking to integrate with tax agencies to automate tax and regulatory filings for businesses, relieving more hassles for businesses.
Lo first came into contact with Seye at École Polytechnique. After graduating, Lu worked briefly as a data scientist before switching to investment banking and joining French startup Skeat. This awakened his entrepreneurial spirit.
“I joined them when they only had six months of cash left. It was very complicated, but for me, it was the best switch of my life, because it helped me discover entrepreneurship, it helped me discover startups, and it also helped me discover SaaS… “During Covid, I was deep in thought thinking about how I could be useful to my community, and for me, it was clear that I had to launch something related to SaaS in Africa,” Lu said.
To date, Socium says it has more than 100 active customers, across 10 industries and 15 countries, and has become one of the few HR techs in Africa to have raised funding recently. WorkPay, a Kenyan startup said to serve over 1,000 customers in 20 African countries, has closed a $5 million funding round led by Visa.
Breega led Socium’s seed round, while Partech, Orange Ventures, Chui Ventures, Sonatel, Outlierz, Super Capital, Evolem, Techmind and a number of angel investors also participated, and Raisers Partners were financial advisors.
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