BetterPlace Safety Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which counts Jungle Ventures, British International Investment (BII), Macquarie Capital and Site Capital Partners as among its marquee investors, has made fresh acquisition, marking its second South East Asia deal in over two months.
The blue-collar workforce management platform bought Malaysia-based flexi talent solutions technology player Troopers for an undisclosed amount, it said in a statement on Monday.
This acquisition will strengthen BetterPlace’s gig fulfilment and workforce-related software-as-a-service (SaaS) capabilities and empower it to further its dominance in the $350 billion global gig market, the statement added.
Troopers, with its automated gig matching and rostering capabilities combined with BetterPlace’s SaaS platform, will enable enterprises in Malaysia and South East Asia region to manage the entire lifecycle of their frontline workforce, which includes hiring, onboarding, verification, attendance, payroll and upskilling.
“Coupled with the unique tech-based flexi talent solutions of Troopers, BetterPlace will help enterprises reliably address issues such as high attrition rates, sky-rocketing management costs, and skilled manpower availability issues. At the same time, frontline workers will be able to maximize their overall earning potential through Troopers’ proprietary gig-matching algorithms,” said Pravin Agarwala, co-founder and group chief executive officer, BetterPlace.
BetterPlace was founded in 2015 by Pravin Agarwala and Uday Singh. It runs a SaaS platform that helps companies to manage the entire lifecycle of their blue-collar workforce. It provides its clients with services such as hiring, background verification and digital onboarding of blue-collar workers.
On the other hand, Troopers, which was founded in 2017, helps enterprises in Malaysia find on-demand, pre-screened, frontline workers on a part-time basis.
“We look forward to leveraging BetterPlace’s tech capabilities and domain expertise that would help us scale this proposition further, potentially changing the nature of frontline work in SEA and the globe,” said Joshua Tan, co-founder and chief executive officer, Troopers.
BetterPlace is doubling down on the South East Asia region as it expects the region to see 4x growth in demand for gig workers in the next five years and that local enterprises may fill up 40% of their workforce requirements with flexi talent.
In February, BetterPlace bought Indonesia-based company MyRobin, marking its foray into the South East Asia market. Its aggressive push in the South East Asian region comes on the heels of the company raising $40 million in its extended Series C round of funding from Macquarie Capital and Site Capital Partners, with Jungle Ventures and British International Investment. It has set aside close to $20 million for spending in the SEA this year.
BetterPlace posted 5x growth in revenue in the financial year ended March 2022 at about Rs 275 crore, Agarwala had said in an earlier interaction with VCCircle. The company has also recorded nearly three-fold growth in revenue in FY23, he claimed. It is aiming to turn profitable by 2025.
