There haven’t been that many exits in the startup world in Africa. There are only a few startups that have seen favorable or huge acquisition terms come their way such as Paystack, InstaDeep, Kopo, Appruve among others. Even so in the past few years there has been a growing trend of startups being acquired by other startups in Africa or International ones looking to extend their wings within the continent.
In that same light, on Tuesday, Deel a HR startup based in San Francisco announced its acquisition of PaySpace an African-based payroll and HR software and services company operating in 44 countries. This is Deel’s largest acquisition to date. PaySpace operates across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa with 14,000 customers utilizing its product and services. According to PaySpace managing director Sandra Crous, the company which serves clients cutting across international companies, enterprise businesses to local single owner shops has seen a 30% annual growth in the number of customers it serves.
PaySpace was established in 2000 by three brothers; Clyde, Warren and Bruce Clark along with George Karageorgiades. The startup began as a cloud-based payroll and human resources platform whose aim was to make efficient the old traditional methods and processes related to HR and payroll. The company has mostly been bootstrapped, only securing undisclosed funding from Netcash last year.
Deel’s acquisition of PaySpace is a push towards its ambitious global expansion and push into enterprise having also just recently acquired PayGroup a payroll provider.
These days, Deel streamlines all facets of overseeing a global workforce, including compliance, payroll, and culture. The company now employs more than 3000 people worldwide in more than 100 countries, and it serves more than 20,000 clients, including Cloudflare, Shopify, and Nike. One of the SAAS firms with the fastest growth rates in the globe is Deel. In 2023, they produced 1,9 million paystubs to ensure that workers around the world received USD9 billion in compensation, onboarded 300,000+ workers onto their platform, and assisted 2,100 people in getting visas across 38 countries.
In the coming years, there will be a lot more acquisitions like this one in Africa.
