SmartHR Receives US$96m Strategic Investment From General Atlantic, Acquiring Stake From Coral Capital
SmartHR, a leading cloud-native human resources management platform, and General Atlantic, a leading global investor, have announced a US$96 million (JPY¥14.6 billion) strategic minority investment from General Atlantic into SmartHR. General Atlantic acquired its stake in SmartHR from Coral Capital, which will remain a committed minority shareholder.
Founded in 2013, SmartHR has established itself as Japan’s leading HR technology platform, providing an all-in-one cloud-based solution for HR services to Japanese businesses. SmartHR’s products include digitizing the employee system of record, as well as supporting workflows across talent and labor management, time and attendance, payroll, and more, in addition to facilitating government reporting requirements. SmartHR's suite of products ultimately helps customers reduce operational burden, manage workforce data more efficiently, enhance overall productivity, and improve the employee experience.
James Riney, Founding Partner & CEO at Coral Capital, said: "Today we are excited to announce our partnership with General Atlantic through their purchase of ~$100m (~JPY 15 billion) worth of our stake in SmartHR. This transaction marks the largest secondary sale ever by a single seller in Japan’s startup history. With this sale, we’ve returned 6x the fund we formed in 2017. The best part is that we still own about half of our stake. We continue to be a major shareholder in the company and are bullish for the years ahead."
General Atlantic and Coral Capital will partner closely with SmartHR’s management team to advance the Company’s growth through new product development, key strategic partnerships, enriched customer engagement and support, complimentary M&A, and continued enhancement of its go-to-market strategy, with the shared goal of accelerating industry-leading customer satisfaction while facilitating the digitalization of Japan’s workforce ecosystem.
The partnership with SmartHR marks General Atlantic’s first growth equity investment in Japan. General Atlantic has a 45-year track record of supporting innovative technology businesses around the globe. The firm brings specific expertise in scaling HR software businesses, with current investments in global growth companies including ATOSS Software, Gusto, Hibob, PayFit, and Staffbase.
About SmartHR
SmartHR is a cloud-based HR and labor management software that has maintained the no. 1 share in the labor management cloud market in Japan for seven consecutive years*. The platform digitizes and centralizes a wide range of HR and labor processes – from managing employee information, employment contracts, and onboarding, to attendance management and payroll calculations – consolidating employee data in a single secure location. In addition, SmartHR leverages this data through talent management functions, such as Performance Reviews, Employee Surveys, Personnel Placement Simulations, and Skill Management, enabling optimal team assignments and talent development to support data-driven human capital management. The app store service, SmartHR Plus, offers applications that integrate SmartHR with a variety of specialized external services across different business areas, allowing companies to enhance customization and achieve highly accurate and secure data integration. SmartHR contributes to improving corporate productivity and creating better working environments for everyone.
Norbert Gehrke
