Khawarizmi Ventures led a USD 1 mn pre-seed funding round for Egypt-based blue-collar HR-tech startup Bluworks, the startup said in a press release (pdf). The homegrown early-stage startup investor was joined by Acasia Ventures, Camel Ventures, and a group of angel investors.

Use of proceeds: The funds are earmarked for building the company’s product portfolio, and growing its team, the statement reads.

Meet Bluworks: Founded in 2022, Blueworks is an HR-tech platform that manages the lifecycle of blue-collar employees across industries, automating the hiring, onboarding, and managing processes. The company is currently focused on the F&B and retail sectors, with plans to expand into manufacturing, construction, and facility management.

The pitch: Blueworks said it can down the length of time it takes to close payroll accounts to just one day, down from up to 10 days, according to CEO Hussein Wahdan. “Since the process of managing this type of workforce is so manual, errors frequently occur, leading to penalties and deducted salaries with no oversight for the workers, causing them to leave and ultimately contributing to high turnover rates.

Could KSA be their second home? “We are excited about getting strategic investors on-board that can provide us with access to both local and regional markets, to which we are looking to expand,” said co-founder Farah Osman. “There is no shortage of industry use cases similar to Egypt around the world, and we are eager to tackle them with our innovative workforce management solutions.”

Bluworks intends to step foot into GCC markets in the medium term, Osman told EnterpriseAM Egypt.

Why Khwarizmi invested: “Like with many emerging markets, solutions to automate workforce management are still lacking. We believe that the Bluworks team has the right mix between local understanding, and the commercial and technical capability to lead this space in Egypt and later in other regional markets,” said Khwarizmi Ventures Venture Partner at Ameer Sherif notes.

What we don’t know: There’s no publicly available information about the size of the stake the VCs picked up or the valuation at which the transaction was executed.

Khwarizmi isn’t new to Egypt: The VC outfit has invested in the series A round of Egypt-based BNPL Khazna and social commerce startup Brimore.

Tags: