SA tech talent marketplace OfferZen raises $5.1m Series A funding to Penetrate Into European markets

OfferZen, a South African tech talent marketplace, has raised a EUR4.5 million (US$5.1 million) Series A funding round to further its expansion into European markets.

OfferZen, based in Cape Town, was founded in 2015 and launched in 2016. It assists tech companies such as Luno, Absa, MMI Holdings, Takealot, WeTransfer, Adyen, and Catawiki in hiring from a community of over 100 000 software makers.

The startup has grown to become South Africa’s leading tech talent marketplace, and it will expand to the Netherlands in April 2020 after acquiring TryCatch, an Amsterdam-based recruitment tech startup. It now intends to expand further in Europe after receiving EUR4.5 million (US$5.1 million) in Series A growth funding from Base Capital, a South African investment firm.

This is OfferZen’s first round of outside funding; the company has been bootstrapped since its inception in 2015. The capital will be used to help OfferZen invest in the local tech community and grow its operations, product, and growth teams as it expands into Europe, with the goal of expanding to two more countries in 2022.

“Right now, tech hiring is expanding at a rate that far exceeds our wildest expectations.” We’re seeing a surge in the number of developers and businesses signing up to use the OfferZen platform. “We experienced a 29% increase in placements between the third and fourth quarters of 2021 alone,” said OfferZen co-founder and CEO Philip Joubert.

“Tech hiring came to a near standstill in the first half of 2020 due to COVID-19. Since then we’ve seen a huge acceleration in the market – companies are now raising far more capital than they were pre-pandemic, investing more in technology and subsequently hiring much faster. Access to top tech talent has become the bottleneck for many companies and we’re in a position to help companies solve that.”