With the goal of empowering the workforce of today and tomorrow, payroll platform Zeal secured $15 million in a Series B funding round on October 10. The investment was led by Portage and included existing backers like Spark Capital and Commerce Ventures.
Modern payroll for modern workers – this seems to be the gist of Zeal’s mission. “Modern workers”, according to Zeal, are defined by workers increasingly seeking flexibility in their employment outside of money-related motivations and choosing a “work to live” mentality over a “live to work” one. It rings true in a post-pandemic market and a challenging hiring environment.
When many businesses turned to staffing companies, gig platforms, labor marketplaces, and HR service providers to help them find workers during this time; Zeal had found its niche to revolutionize payroll for these middlemen and enhance worker experiences.
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“Traditional work arrangements such as employees working for one company, at one location, with one rate of pay, frankly no longer work,” CEO and co-founder Kirti Shenoy wrote.
With features that legacy payroll services lack like remote I-9 verification, custom paperwork, benefits administration, white-label mobile app, paycards and digital wallets, and earned wage access, Zeal sets itself apart from other competitors in the market.
“With this new funding, we’ll continue innovating to help businesses streamline operations, offer new services, and launch best-in-class worker experiences quickly,” Shenoy added.
Part of Y Combination’s 2019 cohort, Zeal built and owns the underlying data model that powers the platform, including the tax engine that covers every jurisdiction in the United States.
The payroll platform, previously known as Puzzl, was founded in 2018 as a payment processing startup for the gig economy. After learning that there were no suitable payroll processors to handle high volume automatically, the founders decided to build a payroll API for custom payroll products.
Co-founder and CTO Pranab Krishnan, who received his computer science degree from University of Pennsylvania, had worked for MITRE and NIDDK previously.
“Our mission is to touch every American paycheck with our tax and payment technology, ensuring that American employees are paid correctly and efficiently,” Krishnan told TechCrunch in an interview.
Shenoy, who went to UPenn with Krishnan and later, to the Wharton School for Entrepreneurial Management, has been a Committee Member at American Payroll Association since 2020.