However, Money Forward cited no plan to introduce the Sleekr platform to the Japanese market

Indonesian human resource (HR) management and accounting platform Sleekr has raised an undisclose funding round from Japanese fintech firm Money Forward, according to a Tech In Asia report.

MoneyForward CFO Naoya Kanesaka said that the company has invested between US$2 million to US$3 million into five companies by far, with the investment into Sleekr being the “comparably larger sized” one.

Money Forward co-founder and CEO Yosuke Tsuji was also appointed to the company’s board of directors.

However, Money Forward cited no plan to introduce the Sleekr platform to the Japanese market as it overlaps with the company’s existing accounting and payroll products.

“In Japan, we already have an accounting and payroll product, so we don’t expect to bring [Sleekr’s] to Japan … But in Japan there are a lot of things we can learn about product strategy and marketing strategy,” Kanesaka said.

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The CFO also stated that the partnership can be a way for the company to understand the market; it marks the first investment Money Forward has ever done outside of its home country.

e27 has reached out to Sleekr to find out more details about their plans after the funding round.

Launched in October 2015, Sleekr started out as a platform to perform HR management tasks from new hires on-boarding, performance management, self-service portal, time-off management, payslip processing, to job description listing and organisation structure building.

Following an acquisition of accounting platform Kiper in November 2016, it began to offer accounting services as well and has been planning to further integrate the two services “in the long run.”

Prior to this funding round, the startup has raised an early stage funding round from an undisclosed corporation.

Money Forward went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 2017.

According to a Nikkei Asian Review report, in the past years IPOs in Japan has been driven by companies in the biotech and mobile game developer sectors. The IPO of Money Forward and AI company PKSHA Technology had added a variety to the platform.

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