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Fuzu, a Finnish-Kenyan recruitment startup has raised 1.75 million EUR ($1.9 m) led by Finnfund, Barona and Polkuni to fuel its expansion in Africa and Asia.
The total funding raised is 1.75 million EUR. Finnfund’s contribution in the first phase will be 500,000 EUR with possibility for extending it to 1.5 million EUR. Barona will invest 150.000 EUR and Polkuni 100.000 EUR during this round.
According to CEO of Fuzu Limited Jussi Hinkkanen,”We are truly excited about the confidence and courage demonstrated by Finnfund, Barona and Polkuni in investing in transformation of the job markets, thus improving the opportunities of millions of people in finding their place in the world.”
Fuzu, which has developed an intelligent career development, learning and recruitment platform for emerging markets aims to provide innovative solutions to challenges faced by millions of job seekers and employers across the emerging markets.
For employers the platform offers advanced search and recruitment solutions with competence evaluation and algorithm based ranking to identify the best fitting candidates. For job seekers the platform provides career counselling, learning solutions and information about open positions and industry updates, providing support and guidance at different stages of user’s career.
With over 180,000 users in Kenya and hundreds of companies that use the platform for finding talent, Fuzu’s main competition include Ringier One Africa Media’s BrighterMonday and Jobebrman, Duma Works, Rocket Internet’s Everjobs and offline recruitment agencies. The potential for growth is significant as there will be more than 120 million people entering the job market between 2010 and 2020 alone, making Africa the largest job market globally by 2040.
”If there is significant friction between supply and demand in the job markets, large amount of jobs fail to materialize and people are left unemployed. Fuzu eases this friction in places where poorly functioning job markets are a hindrance to development. For example in Kenya youth unemployment is a significant challenge. Fuzu provides job seekers with a possibility to demonstrate their skills and competencies and to find work that suits them,” says Finnfund CEO Jaakko Kangasniemi.
Fuzu will also gain from Barona’s extensive experience from job markets and development of work related technology solutions to improve the efficiency of job markets in Africa.
CEO of Barona Technologies Tuomas Mikkonen and Pasi Joronen from Polkuni Oy says youth need to have equal opportunities for educating themselves and for realizing their professional dreams and aspirations. The radical transformation of the job markets through using agile and mobile-first players like Fuzu will be at the forefront of solving global challenges.
