Seso, a workforce management platform for agriculture, announced the close of a $26M Series B led by BOND with participation from Index Ventures, NFX, SV Angel, and other prominent investors. Several Seso customers also participated in the round.
The vertical SaaS company will use the funding to expand its platform, including adding an AI-enabled payroll solution, a banking and remittance solution for farm workers, and a comprehensive HR platform purpose-built for agribusiness employers. Farmers everywhere will now have access to a comprehensive solution that will help them scale to meet seasonal demands and reduce reliance on pencil and paper.
“Any farmer in America will tell you that the biggest risk to their business is labor,” explains Michael Guirguis, Seso’s Co-Founder and CEO. “We are building the industry’s first digital system of record for farms to hire and manage a seasonal workforce while remaining compliant with government regulations.”
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U.S. farms have faced a growing labor shortage for years, and many are now turning to the H-2A visa to supplement their seasonal labor needs. This visa is uncapped, allowing farms to hire experienced agricultural workers from abroad. The program provides migrant workers the opportunity to work on American farms and make as much as 20x higher salaries than they would in their home countries.
However, the H-2A program is exceedingly difficult to navigate, leading many farms to make mistakes in their visa applications – 72% of farms report delayed arrivals for their H-2A workers. In an industry where timing is everything, a delayed harvest can have a devastating effect on a farm’s bottom line. Seso streamlines the process of applying to the H-2A visa program and digitizes the paperwork involved for both workers and employers.
Beyond streamlining the H-2A visa process, Seso helps farmers across the entire country use the latest software to manage their back-office workflows and HR documentation. The platform provides all of the functionality a farmer needs to manage their workforce.
“Seso has a bold and thoughtful digital vision to help address the labor shortages that have plagued the nation’s agricultural industry for decades,” notes Mary Meeker, General Partner at BOND. “We are excited to partner with Seso as they help farm workers succeed and provide a generational step forward in business software solutions for agriculture employers.”
Since launching its software platform in 2021, hundreds of farms, including 27 of the 100 largest employers in the industry, have adopted Seso as their labor management solution. Last year alone, the company signed up more than 88,000 workers for seasonal jobs. As Seso expands beyond visa automation into full-stack HR, the company is leading the way in bringing the advancements of AI to the farm.
“We are building the most comprehensive HR system ever created for agriculture while ensuring it’s simple and easy to use. Generative AI is going to make a 50-hour payroll reconciliation process take under 5 minutes and will remove the reliance on paper checks and manual data entry for the back-office team,” explains Jordan Taylor, the company’s Co-Founder and Head of Product.
SOURCE: Businesswire