HR tech firm raises $1.6M for PH expansion

Sprout Solutions, a start-up focused on tech solutions in the field of human resources, succeeded in raising $1.6 million in its seed round to support its expansion in the Philippines.

The company, whose founders tapped internal funding since it started in 2015, said that it lured investors such as Kickstart Ventures, Wavemaker Partners and Beenext.
It said the money would be used “to accelerate expansion in the Philippines” and support its artificial intelligence products for business clients.

The company said in a statement that it now serves more than 200 firms.

The decision to raise venture capital started in late 2017. Its co-founder and CEO Patrick Gentry and cofounder and CPO Alex Agbayani Gentry realized the addressable market for HR-tech in the Philippines was “much larger than they first forecast.”

“What we’ve found is that even the biggest companies in the country also need Sprout. The legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) products they typically use from abroad do not cater to the nuances of business in the Philippines. In contrast, we’ve built our products from day one to make it easier for Filipino businesses to do their core HR and payroll,” Gentry said in a statement.

The company said its platform was tailored to the domestic market.

There are 32 different pay rates in the Philippines, which international ERP systems have no ability to automate. In contrast, Sprout makes it a point to automate them for payroll calculation.

“Sprout also appeals to enterprise-level companies not only because it simplifies HR and payroll processes, but because it can bring tremendous business value from the data it collects,” the company said.