Simon Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Jem, Quona Venture Partner Johan Bosini and Caroline van der Merwe, Jem co-founder and COO. (Photo: Supplied)
South African HR technology company Jem has raised $8.4 million in a Series A funding round led by global fintech investor Quona Capital, as it expands its workforce management platform for frontline workers.
The Cape Town-based company says the funding will support the development of additional products and features, including time and attendance, rostering, onboarding, employee assistance programmes and credit scores.
Jem, which operates through WhatsApp, currently serves more than 250 000 employees across more than 200 companies. Its customers include Servest, Bidvest, McDonald’s, KFC, Seattle Coffee Company and Bootleggers.
The Series A round also included University Tech Fund, E4E and angel investors, including former Old Mutual CEO Iain Williamson.
Jem says its revenue has grown by more than 120% over the past year, while recurring revenue has more than doubled year-on-year. It reported net revenue retention of 124% and note that customer churn is close to zero.
The company was founded in 2020 as SmartWage and rebranded as Jem in 2022. It initially focused on earned wage access, allowing employees to access wages they had already earned through WhatsApp.
It has since expanded into workforce management, offering tools covering document management, onboarding, time and attendance, leave and workforce communication.
“Many employers still run their workforces on a patchwork of legacy systems, from earned-wage-access point solutions to workforce communication tools,” says Simon Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Jem.
“Jem replaces that patchwork with one platform, built on WhatsApp. We designed it to be engaging and to work for the realities of deskless workforces.”
The company says its next phase of growth will centre on what it describes as an AI-native workforce management platform.
Its employer product, Jem Hub, brings workforce management functions into a single platform, with the company planning to add further products and features over time.
Ellis says the company is preparing to roll out “Jem 2.0”, with some new products already live and others in beta.
Caroline van der Merwe, co-founder and COO, notes the company initially focused on addressing employees’ cash-flow challenges before gradually expanding its offering.
“We started Jem because a huge industry (payday lending) was profiting from employees struggling with cash flow, entirely outside the employer-employee relationship, and costing them roughly 10 times more.”
Van der Merwe says the company intends to use the latest funding and AI capabilities to accelerate its product development.
“Our vision has always been to join the dots into one workforce management platform, and this raise, together with AI, lets us do that far faster. We’re aiming to serve over a million users within three years, with plans to scale internationally too,” she comments.
Quona Venture Partner Johan Bosini says the investment reflects the opportunity to use Jem’s WhatsApp-based platform to provide employers with a broader set of workforce services.
“We backed Jem because it sits at a powerful intersection: essential workforce software that helps companies build deeper relationships with their people.”
Bosini says the platform could eventually support services including payroll integration tools, mobile connectivity, insurance and other employee benefits.
Mordor Intelligence estimates the global frontline-worker technology market will grow from $16.31 billion in 2025, to $45.06 billion by 2031, representing an 18.65% CAGR.
