BetterPlace, the largest frontline workforce management platform in Asia, announced its debut into South-East Asia by paying an unknown sum for the majority of the shares of MyRobin, Indonesia's top blue collar labour fulfilment company.
South-East Asia has a high rate of digital adoption, but there hasn't been much of a digital revolution in the area of frontline staff management. To manage their blue collar staff, businesses continue to engage with a variety of fragmented solutions and contractors, which has a negative impact on productivity.
A horizontal SaaS product that offers all frontline personnel management services under one roof would be ideal for the $280 billion frontline workforce management market in Southeast Asia, which has close to 200 million frontline workers. BetterPlace hopes to achieve the same success in SEA as it did in India with its horizontal range of offerings.
"Driven by the vision to optimize frontline workforce management for enterprises, a combination of consolidation and innovation was the right way to go about building the world's most comprehensive workforce management platform that exists today. As the largest player in Asia today, we are thrilled to welcome MyRobin to the BetterPlace family and further our vision towards formalizing the frontline workforce globally. With our technology and MyRobin's expertise in operating in Indonesia, we would be able to introduce equitable opportunities for the frontline segment."
MyRobin offers businesses in Indonesia on-demand, pre-screened frontline labour on both a long-term and short-term basis thanks to their community of over 3 million workers. Additionally, MyRobin offers attendance and performance monitoring services, as well as embedded financial services like early wage and BNPL through their product MyWarung.
It also has a platform for frontline personnel upskilling called MyRobin Academy. MyRobin was introduced in Indonesia in 2020, and among its customers are companies like Shopee, Astro, Sicepat, E-Fishery, and Kopi Kenangan. In 2022, the business experienced a 7X growth, and in the previous two years, it directly impacted 44,000 families.
Commenting on the partnership, Ardy Satria Hasanuddin, Co-founder & CTO at MyRobin said, "Over the last four years we have been able to empower over 3 million frontline workers in over 270 cities in Indonesia to live a life of dignity by elevating them to the formal economy and giving them access to formal finance, jobs, and training. As the next chapter of our growth we would like to take our vision and expertise to more geographies and BetterPlace is the perfect partner who will enable us to achieve this goal. We are delighted and excited to be part of BetterPlace and aspire to become instrumental in achieving our shared goal of creating a better place for enterprises and frontline workers across the world."
MyRobin obtained funding from international investors as Antler, SOSV, Accion Venture Lab, and Investible thanks to a strong business strategy. BetterPlace is making a number of investments in order to enter the SEA markets, including this acquisition. The business intends to use both organic and inorganic methods in the near future to grow into Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
BetterPlace has completed a $40 million expanded Series C investment in which it attracted the participation of international investor Macquarie Capital as well as Jungle Ventures, Unitus, BII, Capria, and 3one4 Capital.