UK-based HR startup Zelt today announced it has raised €3.1 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Episode 1 Ventures and Village Global, with participation from a number of high-profile angels including Charlie Songhurst, Mandeep Singh, Felix Leuschner and Daniel Hegarty.
Founded in 2022, Zelt provides companies with a single system from which they can manage HR, IT and financial operations across the employee lifecycle, enabling leadership teams to consolidate vendors and automate tasks where it concerns employees – across HR, payroll, onboarding, expenses and more.
“Until now, companies needed to piece together a number of different tools in order to run even basic people operations, due to the limited scope of the existing tools available. This made it difficult for companies to take a holistic approach, not to mention facilitate automation and self-service options,” commented Zelt Founder and CEO, Chris Priebe.
Studies from both Ernst & Young and CM have recently shown that HR professionals spend 86% of their time on administrative work within HR, while 85% of employees feel that information on general company procedures is not easily accessible.
Zelt’s deliberately holistic approach allows modern employers to support their employees within one platform throughout the entire employee lifecycle, providing all the services each person needs at every milestone. By consolidating technologies within its platform, Zelt reduces the need for companies to pass employee data from one system to another, improving overall data security and governance, a pressing concern of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) following a number of recent high-profile incidents that exposed millions of sensitive employee records.
As it scales its offering for midmarket clients, Zelt already counts a number of fast-growing tech startups and medium-sized businesses among its expanding customer base, some of those clients include software platforms One Trading, Two Inc, Deblock, Mumsnet and One Dome.
“As soon as we started using Zelt’s product we got excited. Chris has flipped conventional thinking on its head and prioritised the employee journey right from the start. Zelt has worked out what services every employee needs and puts them on a timeline that makes the most sense for the user. Onboard in minutes with the right device and payroll configuration, setup software tools and schedule workflows, and then add to that as the relationship evolves,” commented Paul McNabb, partner at Episode 1 Ventures.
Using automation and a self-service platform, Zelt aims to ease administrative workloads by merging the core components of people operations into a single system that is integrated, automated and intuitive for employees to use.
“In the US, many of our portfolio companies have already replaced their HRIS with a more powerful platform such as Rippling, and seen immediate customer ROI. This trend is now spreading across the globe, and Zelt is one of the best products we have seen in the market. So we are extremely keen to support Chris as he continues to further improve the product and scale internationally,” commented Anne Dwane, co-founder and partner at Village Global, the venture firm backed by tech magnates like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
Zelt, which was recently nominated for user experience and design awards, the Awwwards, will use its latest tranche of funding to increase its marketing effort, and satisfy the growing demand from increasingly larger, more international customers.
