Indonesian HR Tech Startup Synergo Raises Seed Funding From East Ventures

Jakarta-based HR Tech startup Synergo has raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding from East Ventures. Synergo plans to utilise the raised funding to enhance its HR Tech solutions as per local business needs.

The aim is to help businesses increase employee performance via tracking, evaluating, comparing and analysing both employee performance and the company’s performance trends.

As stated by Domenico Tukiman co-founder and CEO of Synergo in an official statement, “We believe that a company’s most important asset is their human capital, and the first step to unlocking the full potential of one’s human capital is to have a structured process to continuously track and measure it. With Synergo, companies can quickly implement a performance review system without disrupting their current business process.”

Synergo: A Glimpse Of The Offered HR Tech Solutions

Domenico Tukiman, Synergo’s co-founder and CEO met his co-founder and CTO Rhapsody Budiono while studying in Los Angeles. The duo realised that most companies do not have a clear organisational structure and performance management system.

Synergo’s HR Tech platform provides a structure for performance reviews, employee goal alignment, and data analytics tools to obtain key insights for management.

Managers are able to set and assign goals for their employees. Employees are able to track their personal goals and align them with their team and managers, and the company is able to visualise tracked data to obtain key insights for management decisions.

The Synergo team creates goals and competencies tailored to each company during a brainstorming session and following this, every client will be able to access their private portal to monitor specific goals.

What Problems Is Synergo Trying To Solve With Its HR Tech Solutions?

As shared by Synergo in an official press release, currently 52% of the employed population in Indonesia is under qualified for their job position.

With the minimum wage in Indonesia growing exponentially since 2012 and by 8.32% in 2016 alone (source: Badan Pusat Statistik), it is necessary that companies not only hire the right people for their company but also maximise staff performance.

Most Indonesian companies do not have a structured performance review process, therefore, are not able to get a complete picture of their workforce utilisation and a clear means of differentiating between high and low performers.

Synergo is working towards solving this problem. The Synergo team has localised its HR Tech product for Indonesian market by offering a subscription-based model so that companies can pay as they grow rather than deal with a high upfront cost.

Rhapsody Budiono co-founder and CTO of Synergo adds, “With our data analytics tools, business owners can easily gain deeper visibility about the condition of their workforce, such as by discovering top performers and future leaders in order for them to retain and develop the best talent, and at the same time proactively engage underperformers and help them achieve their full potential.”

East Ventures: Leapfrogging Ahead On Its Investment Spree In Southeast Asia

Established in 2010, East Ventures is a Singapore-headquartered venture capital firm with offices in Tokyo, Jakarta and San Francisco. So far, it has made over 122 investments in 97 companies across sectors like ecommerce, software, marketplaces, games, apps, etc.

As earlier reported by Inc42, East Ventures has around 80 active portfolio companies across Southeast Asia. The VC firm has invested in more than 20 new startups per year and witnessed a follow-on investment rate of 75%.

In January 2017, East Ventures launched its fifth fund with a corpus of $27.5 Mn. Since then, the media has not stopped talking about this early stage VC firm.

Here are a few updates on the East Ventures movement in the Indonesia startup ecosystem after launching its fifth fund:

• January 2017: Participated in Series B funding round of online makeup and beauty products platform, Sociolla.
• January 2017: Invested an undisclosed amount of Seed funding in HR Tech startup Ekrut.
• April 2017: Entered into a partnership with Singapore-based SGInnovate to open a joint launchpad for startups.
• July 2017: Participated in Seed funding round of Julo, a peer to peer lending startup

Other recent investments of East Ventures include Immersv, breadwallet, Member.id, Airfrov, EV Hive and more.

As per a report released by McKinsey a few years back, Indonesia is expected to become the seventh largest economy in the world by 2030, with a requirement of 113 Mn skilled work force. Also, the country is expected to have a $1.8 Tn market opportunity in consumer services, agriculture, and fisheries, resources and education. Thus, the opportunity is huge. But, how well the East Ventures-based HR Tech startup Synergo will be able to cash in on the opportunity remains to be seen.