STARTUPS Why Multiplier is a panacea for HR hiring troubles
How VFlowTech’s energy solution improves battery life by 85%
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Multiplier co-founders
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iring staff across multiple countries can be a headache for any human resource department at the best of times, but with travel blocked the complications of onboarding new employees in a foreign country is even more acute. This is where Multiplier Co-founders Sagar Khatri, Amritpal Singh, and Vamsi Krishna saw an opportunity to create an online platform that manages payroll and local labour compliance regulations across different countries, allowing the employer to confidently onboard new staff. Setting up abroad can be an expensive and timeconsuming process taking up to nine weeks and costing $51,000, according to the global business set-up expert, Healy Consultants. Simplifying the processes of managing labour regulation and contracts, legal affairs, and risk management is what Multiplier aims to do. “Multiplier is a self-serve global employment platform that lets businesses expand and employ international talent compliantly without having to set up an entity,” according to the co-founder. With remote work now a reality, many organisations may seek staff in a multitude of countries without physically wanting to set up offices or legal structures in those countries, but, nevertheless, would want to remain compliant with local labour laws as they hire local staff on a work from home basis. “It is the first platform to run international management of compliance and a multi-country payroll in a single dashboard. It has an instant onboarding system that allows businesses to hire international talents in a matter of minutes; and an automated compliance payroll and payments solution that enables businesses to pay their talent working anywhere in the world, compliantly,” they said. Expansion in progress Adding to the company’s coverage is a global presence in over 150 countries across APAC, Europe, and the US. An on-site team of legal and tax experts is also available to help draft multilingual contracts and international payroll accounts. This, according to them, helps businesses focus on their core goals, whilst the role of international employment falls on to Multiplier. The platform recently raised $13.2m in Series A funding in November 2021, with Sequoia Capital India serving as the lead investor. Existing investors include DeepInder Goyal, Co-founder, Zomato and Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs. 12
SINGAPORE BUSINESS REVIEW | Q1 2022
y now the world is familiar with lithium-based batteries, those wonders of electricity storage that are rechargeable and found in everything from smartphones to electric cars. But could a better battery be built with another elemental atom? Yes, said the founders of the new battery startup VFlowTech, which uses the metal Vanadium instead of lithium to store energy. Vanadium is a medium-hard, steel-blue metal that rarely exists as a free element in nature but can be found in about 65 different minerals. The Temasek-backed firm has raised $4m so far and has developed a unique electrolyte additive, which is the secret source on which it has developed the intellectual property to make a vanadium redox flow battery. Vanadium redox flow batteries operate at a much wider temperature which is particularly useful because this ensures that the battery is stable and less prone to degradation of electrolyte due to overtemperature operation.
VFlowTech banked on the Vanadium redox flow tech to make batteries run at a wider temperature
where the lack of reliable grid coverage creates immediate revenue opportunities for us to replace diesel generators with 24/7 renewable power leveraging batteries or provide backup power solutions for How it came to be industrial and commercial buildings facing The firm was founded by Dr. Arjun unreliable grid situations. A true potential Bhattarai and Dr. Avishek Kumar, for VFlowTech would be achieving who spent years researching the field targets to power 20% of Asia’s off-grid and at Nanyang Nanyang Technological renewable energy market,” Bhattarai said. University. Right now, it already has two projects for “Both of us have strong expertise integrating its V-Flow battery application in the field of renewable energy, and into EV charging infrastructure in South we wanted to use our knowledge and Korea and Thailand. expertise on vanadium redox flow “We have already secured competitive technology to provide an alternative grants to work on the next-generation solution to lithium-ion batteries—one power stack with German universities.” that has a longer lifespan and also has Bhattarai added. a lower chance of catching fire, and is Started in 2018, VFlowTech initially ideal for utility-scale storage, equally for raised $4.07m (US$3m) in a pre-Series off-grid systems relying on renewables A funding round led by Wavemaker and grid applications,” Bhattarai, now the Partners, with participation from SEEDS chief technological officer of VFlowTech, Capital, Sing Fuels and other unnamed explained. angel investors. The Singapore-based “We have since designed and startup initially raised more than $1m developed a unique power stack that can (US$800k) in its seed funding round with significantly reduce parasitic losses and participation from Temasek Foundation improve the round-trip efficiency over and Enterprise Singapore, making their 85%,” he said. total funding to date at over US$4m. “The falling cost of energy storage is Research from Lux and other analysts making renewable energy microgrids have predicted that stationary energy economically viable and a reliable storage solutions will grow to US$30b in alternative to diesel. Our geographical annual revenues in Asia over the next 10 focus is on emerging markets of Asia, years.
