ALIVE invests in Symplifica, a Colombian HRTech offering payroll management solutions to formalize domestic worker employment

ALIVE announces a bridge investment in Symplifica, a Colombian online platform offering payroll management solutions with a focus on formalizing domestic workers employment. ALIVE's funding will support Symplifica’s platform development as the company prepares to raise a Series A later in the year that will enable the company to expand regionally.

Symplifica guarantees access to decent and fair working conditions to domestic workers, as well as access to mandatory benefits. For employers, Symplifica provides convenience and peace of mind that they are compliant with labour regulations.

Traditionally, domestic work has been characterized by its high levels of informality, unfair working conditions, including long working hours, low wages, unpaid labour and little or no social protection. The number of people living in these conditions is vast. Currently, 20 million people work as domestic workers in Latam, out of which 93% are women. Domestic workers represent 8% of the total labour force in Latam and account for 13% of all labour informality in the region. In Colombia, 89% of domestic workers have verbal contracts, 77% receive food as payment in kind and 61% earn less than the minimum legal wage. Founded in 2015, Symplifica is attempting to change these conditions.

Symplifica helps employers throughout all management tasks, from enrolment to contract termination, automatically executing 100% of payroll and social security payments. Through an innovative and disruptive model, Symplifica dignifies the work of thousands of domestic employees and formalizes their labour relationships, guaranteeing fair working hours, having a signed employment contract, earning at least the legal minimum wage, and ensuring registration to the social security system which includes paid vacations, maternity leave, pension, severance savings and access to health insurance.

To date, Symplifica has formalized over 11,000 jobs in Colombia, out of which 97% are women, 85% had never contributed to a pension fund in the past and only 38% have completed their primary studies. Additionally, the company has shown strong growth in the last few years and even during the coronavirus growing 3.6x times over the last couple of years. The company is currently focusing on domestic workers but plans to expand to SMEs.

"With this investment, we are excited to support the growth of Symplifica, a company that is addressing head-on the deep inequalities that domestic workers face in Latin America”, said Virgilio Barco, Co-founder & Managing Partner of ALIVE.