Australia’s Employment Hero hits unicorn status after $167m funding round

Australian employment management platform Employment Hero has announced raising A$263 million (about $167 million) in its Series F funding round, minting the nine-year-old startup as Australia’s newest unicorn.

The funding round was anchored by global growth fund TCV (Technology Crossover Ventures), an investor in Airbnb, ByteDance, Electronic Arts, Expedia, GoDaddy, Linkedin, Netflix, and Meta.

Existing investors Insight Partners, AirTree, Seek, and OneVentures also participated in the round, which brought the company’s valuation close to A$2.13 billion (about $1.2 billion).

Employment Hero will use the fresh funding to accelerate into key international markets. While headquartered in Sydney, the company also operates in Singapore and Malaysia.

The latest fundraising follows a Series E round of funding in 2021 that raised about $129 million. The company said the latest funding round brings the total funds it raised to date to about $411 million.

“Whilst we were not actively seeking funding, our growth story has meant that we have received significant inbound investor interest—this has given us incredible confidence in our vision,” said co-founder and CEO Ben Thompson.

He said the company’s goal is to become a $30-billion plus business.

Co-founded by Thompson and Dave Tong in 2014, Employment Hero serves over 300,000 SMEs and over two million employees globally. It offers HR software that combines functions like payroll, employee benefits and retirement, employment contracts, and accounting into a single web.

In May, the company announced the launch of Swag, an employment app and AI-driven solution designed to help SMEs in Malaysia and Singapore overcome talent acquisition challenges.

The startup earlier said about 97% of employers in Australia have less than 200 employees and largely do not have access to tools to make the people management process easy or offer more meaningful benefits to their staff.

Along with the funding news, Employment Hero also announced the launch of its Hero Foundation, which aims to facilitate employment for 1 million people from difficult or underprivileged communities over the next decade.

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