CharlieHR, a London-based startup that provides free HR platforms for small businesses, has raised £1m in seed funding from Connect Ventures and early-stage fund Seedcamp.
The round also drew support from Nutmeg founder Nick Hungerford, James Wise – partner at Balderton Capital – Huddle founder Alistair Mitchell and Songkick founder Ian Hogarth, among others.
Rob O’Donovan, CharlieHR’s co-founder and CEO, told Tech City News: “Most small businesses currently use a mix of messy spreadsheets and email to manage all their employee data. This isn’t just inefficient and complex (particularly as you grow) but often very insecure.
“Your employer holds more information on you than anyone else in the world – from copies of your passport and national insurance number to bank details and salary information –we’re providing a secure, cloud based solution that looks after your data safely whilst also making simple HR functions (eg booking and approving time off) easy rather than a complex and time consuming chain of emails,” he added.
Although CharlieHR’s software will remain free, a statement said the startup would monetise through an intelligent marketplace that will allow companies to purchase a series of products and services.
Sitar Teli, managing partner at Connect Ventures, commented on the round: “The founders have spent years building businesses and understand the pain of scaling operations and teams. Their goal of building great, enjoyable to use software to ease that pain is both ambitious and challenging and we’re excited to support them.”
CharlieHR, a statement continued, will use the newly procured funds to build additional functionality into its platform, develop its marketplace offering and to drive its expansion across Europe.
Carlos Espinal, partner at Seedcamp, concluded: “We look for teams working on ideas that have the potential to revolutionize markets and how they work. One area constantly under stress is human resources. Managing the staff of fast growing companies is no easy feat; CharlieHR allows these businesses to manage scaling teams with ease. We’re excited to invest in CharlieHR and the benefits the startup ecosystem will reap from their offering.”