Case Study: Zoomo invests in digital to support global expansion

E-bike last mile logistics company Zoomo saw a 4X business growth and 3X growth in headcount last year, as the business invested heavily in digital as part of its expansion strategy.

Digital Nation Australia spoke to Saran Somaskanthan, head of international expansion at Zoomo about the partnership with international payroll solution Deel and its role in supporting Zoomo’s global expansion.

“We came across a number of different employer of record (EOR) offerings and Deel, based on their scale, their efficiency, their easy to use platform in UX, was certainly the reason why we went with them. And we haven't really looked back since,” said Somaskanthan.

Having considered both traditional accounting firms and payroll providers, as well as a number of Deel competitors delivering global EOR solutions, Somaskanthan said that its offering was the only one that could meet Zoomo’s scale requirements.

“It could be day one and we're looking at expanding into a country in Europe and then day two, we're looking at somewhere in the Asia Pacific and we needed that scale and efficiency, and that’s why we chose Deel as our global vendor.”

The key wins for Zoomo as a result of the partnership include an improved speed to market.

“When we're expanding into a new market, it's driven by the demand given to us by our enterprise customers. They themselves are often innovative, fast moving, growth driven delivery companies. And as the on-demand delivery spaces are booming, they've had to similarly adapt to be able to expand rapidly around the world and we've had to follow them and meet that demand as well,” he said.

“Deel has allowed us to efficiently do that, despite the fact that we're often given short lead times to expand into these markets. They've enabled us to be a bit more ambitious in our expansion plan plans.”

Somaskanthan says the new solution helped Zoomo expand into four countries, Spain, Germany, France and Canada, as well as hiring 35 staff.

The challenge for the software provider will be keeping up with Zoomo’s growth trajectory he said.

“I hope that Deel will be able to keep a pace with us as we grow into different markets as well. To date, they definitely have.”