Papaya Global raises $40 million to boost global employment platform

Papaya didn't reveal the value at which it raised the funds, but it is believed to have more than doubled since its previous round at the end of 2019 and to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars

 

Global payroll and payment startup Papaya Global announced the close of a $40 million series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Workday Ventures, Access Industries (via its Israeli vehicle Claltech), and existing investors Insight Venture Partners, Bessemer Ventures Partners, New Era Ventures, Group 11, and Dynamic Loop.

 

Papaya didn't reveal the value at which it raised the funds, but it is believed to have more than doubled since its previous round at the end of 2019 and to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The new funding round brings investment in the Israel-founded company to a total of $95 million.

Papaya Global co-foudner and CEO Eynat Guez. Photo: Orel Cohenצילום: אוראל כהן

"One year ago I was giving Calcalist an interview about our series A funding round and in that year the world has been turned on its head. Like everyone else we also went through stages of pessimism and uncertainty, but very quickly we understood that Papaya's solution is becoming more essential than ever for companies within this new reality," Guez told Calcalist. "From a personal standpoint this past year has taught me to trust my instincts but not to ignore for one moment what is happening in the market. It taught me to be a good leader for our employees across the world who needed me to be strong for them and to also adjust to changes like the complete halting of air travel, recruiting employees remotely and supporting employees who needed to get used to working from home with kids around."

 

Guez added that it wasn't straight-forward to raise money during the pandemic. "If last year it was clear that as part of raising money you need to meet investors, provide a presentation for an investment committee and usually also host them for a visit, today everything went remote," she explained.

 

Papaya employs 150 people based out of London, Austin, New York, Shanghai, Melbourne and Kiev. "We are lucky to be able to add Scale Venture Partners, one of the top VCs investing in the cloud sector, to our list of investors. Papaya is here to be a global leader in this sector and the plan is to have the company go public over the next 2-3 years. I'm proud of the company's team for an amazing year of hard work and achieving the impossible."

 

"Papaya Global's accelerating growth is a testament to their top-notch executive leadership as well as their ability to streamline international payroll management, a first for many enterprises that have learned to live with highly manual payroll processes,” said Rory O'Driscoll, Partner at Scale Venture Partners. “The complexity and cost of managing multi-region workforces cannot be understated. Eynat and her team are uniquely serving their customers’ needs, bringing an advanced SaaS platform into a market long-starved for more effective software solutions.”