Payfit was created in 2015 by Firmin Zocchetto, Ghislain de Fontenay and Florian Fournie. This startup is now establishing itself in the sphere of payroll management. Thanks to their service, the companies have managed to solve a universal problem related to this subject. Today, it announces, with its fundraising, that it will recruit 400 new employees in 2022.
January 6, 2022 is a big day for Payfit, it is in fact the day the startup joined the prestigious circle of tricolor unicorns, these technology companies valued at $1 billion. Payfit specializes in human resources management and payroll automation.
It led a funding round of 254 million euros from General Atlantic, an American fund, as well as other historic investors such as Eurazeo, Accel and Bpifrance, via its Large Venture fund. Today, the young company is valued at 1.82 billion euros. Following this new round of financing, the unicorn plans to recruit 400 new people in 2022 to reach 1,100 employees and go from 6,000 client companies to 9,000 in Europe. The unicorn is present today in France, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain.
Origins and beginnings of Payfit
Payfit was created thanks to a trio: Firmin Zocchetto, Ghislain de Fontenay and Florian Fournie. The three were passionate about entrepreneurship and knew they were capable of achieving great things. They therefore decided to begin their adventure by responding to a very specific problem. : payroll management. For the founders, the solution was obvious. It was absolutely necessary to automate payroll-related tasks to make daily life easier for organizations.
After months of hard work and reflection, they implemented JetLang, a unique programming language, created by PayFit. It now makes it possible to easily integrate all social regulations into their solution. From now on, young entrepreneurs aim to respond to a broader problem: “How to make work a source of fulfillment for everyone?” »
In less than seven years of existence, Payfit has become a unicorn based in Paris, but also Berlin, London and Barcelona. Today, 80% of customers are present in France, but this should change soon.
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Become the European leader in payroll management
The meteoric growth of the young company is mainly based on their unique technology via its own programming language which makes it possible to integrate the complexity of labor law into easy-to-use tools for SMEs. Firmin Zocchetto, co-founder of Payfit, details his ambitions: “ We could have been content to grow quietly, but we want to quickly become a leader in our field in Europe. »
The future ambitions consist of three points:
- Improve the payroll automation software, ensuring relevant service monitoring, such as working time, leave or expense reports as well as the implementation of a new tool dedicated to evaluation interviews .
- Achieve 70% growth and 9,000 client companies at the end of 2022, after 80% growth in 2021.
- Recruit 400 people in 2022.
Massive recruitment of 400 people planned by Payfit
Payfit plans to recruit 400 people working remotely in 2022. It will thus increase from 700 to 1,100 employees by the end of the year. “If we have 8,000 m² of offices in Paris, all our future recruitments are possible via teleworking. So we already have more than twenty employees working from the West, there will be at least four times more at the end of the year.
On the profitability side, managers specify that this point could already be reached but we have great ambitions and our desire is to continue to develop our model on a very large scale. »
On the profitability side, the co-founder and CEO of PayFit, Firmin Zocchetto, specifies in Les Echos: “ We believe we can pass 100 million annual revenues within 18 months. The valuations we are seeing at the moment may seem absurd, but if the promised growth is delivered, it won’t be at all. »
