Danish payroll automation startup Pento has raised a $15.6 million Series A funding round led by General Catalyst with Avid Ventures and Local Globe participating in the funding as well as existing investors Point Nine Capital, Moonfire Ventures, Hustle Fund and Seedcamp. Angel investors Tom Blomfield, Matt Robinson Freddy Macnamara and others took part in the round too. The total funding raised by the company to date amounts to $18.4 million, with the latest funding to be used to expand its remote team around the globe, further expand into Europe and US as well as continue improving its technology with advanced features to simplify payroll.
Pento provides a SaaS-based online platform intended to optimize payroll services. Its platform helps to automate payroll system and offer complementary features to employees, such as user-friendly access to pay history and personal pay-related data, enabling small and medium sized companies to find a digital way to automate salary processing and taxes while being fully connected to HMRC.
Founded by Jonas Bøgh Larsen and Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen in 2016, the startup claims to have supported 700 companies with some of them being tech firms Pleo and Cuvva, retail and e-commerce brands Lacoste and Beauty Pie as well as hospitality brands Honest Burgers. Pento follows its unique approach for their customers giving them cloud-based tools, real time calculations, transparency and online telephone support instead of the traditional spreadsheets, PDFs and e-mails.
Pento co-founder and CEO, Jonas Bøgh Larsen said: “The biggest process we’re replacing is payroll outsourcing where companies are outsourcing payroll to an accountant, which the vast majority of companies do in Europe. We automate the entire process from reporting to tax calculations to payments. So, what most other platforms or payable products do is basically just helping you calculate the right taxes and National Insurance, and so on. We also take care of the reporting. We also do payments, and we integrate the product to other HR products.”
Co-founder and CTO, Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen also commented: “Our integrations with existing software play a key role in what sets us apart,”.“From day one, we said we didn’t want to become a Jack of all trades, master of none. We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin trying to be accounting, HR, pension providers and more. Payroll is our bread and butter. Purely payroll. Not only does focusing on improving every single element of payroll make us infinitely more useful for our customers, but we’re building the infrastructure that enables us and other startups to innovate and build the next-generation of new and exciting compensation products. We’re also delighted to welcome angel investors from the likes of Papaya Global (Eynat Guez), Remote.com (Job van der Voort), OysterHR (Tony Jamous) and Deel (Alex Bouaziz) to this round. Their experience creating industry-leading companies in the HR and payroll tech space provides significant validation for us.”
Source: Eu-Startups “Copenhagen-based Pento raises €12.7 million to expand its real-time, automated payroll software”
