Grace Ashiru
Bluworks, an Egyptian startup, has secured $1 million in a pre-seed investment round aimed at bolstering product development, team expansion, and marketing efforts.
The company specializes in creating SaaS solutions for blue-collar HR-Tech.
The pre-seed investment round was led by Khawarizmi Ventures, a Saudi venture capital firm, and included participation from a group of angel investors, Camel Ventures, and Acasia Ventures. Bluworks will use the funding to expand its staff and further develop its product.
Founded in 2022 by Farah Osman, Hussein Wahdan, and Nour Ahmadein, Bluworks offers an all-in-one, mobile-first HR solution tailored for the blue-collar industry.
Employers and workers both benefit from the platform, which streamlines payroll, scheduling, recognition, and other functions for dispersed teams and locations.
“With so many HR software options in the market, none are designed specifically to manage blue-collar workers,” said Wahdan. “The process of managing this type of workforce is so manual that errors frequently occur, leading to penalties and deducted salaries without workers’ oversight.
This causes them to leave, ultimately contributing to high turnover rates. Currently, companies can spend about 7-10 days just closing their payroll accounts, but with bluworks, this time can be cut down to one day—all while leveraging data and insights on their workforce.”
“We are excited about bringing strategic investors on board who can provide us with access to both local and regional markets, where we plan to expand. There is no shortage of industry use cases similar to Egypt around the world, and we are eager to tackle them with our innovative workforce management solutions,” said Osman.
Egypt boasts one of the largest labor populations in the MENA and Africa region, according to Ameer Sherif, a venture partner at Khwarizmii Ventures. However, there is a shortage of properly localized software solutions available in the area.
“Like many emerging markets, solutions for automating workforce management are still lacking. We believe that the bluworks team has the right mix of local understanding and commercial and technical capability to lead this space in Egypt and eventually in other regional markets,” Sherif stated.
Currently, thousands of blue-collar workers are managed by bluworks on its platform, which is utilized by numerous companies such as Crave, Qahwa, and Cilantro. While the company is presently focusing on the retail and food and beverage sectors, it has plans to expand into other industries like manufacturing, construction, and facility management.
