The current business competition landscape in China and around the world is undergoing significant changes. Companies are seeking dividends from management to achieve refined and high-quality development, which has become one of the most pressing demands of the era. With the major trend of digital transformation and cloud adoption among Chinese enterprises, the HR SaaS market holds tremendous potential.
Software as a Service (SaaS) refers to a service model in cloud computing. It is a way of providing centrally hosted applications over the Internet. Enterprise users typically access these applications through web browsers, without the need to purchase, install, or maintain any software or hardware. Therefore, SaaS applications are also known as “web-based software” or "hosted software".
The SaaS industry in China started around 2005 when a few domestic companies began experimenting with transitioning from traditional client-server (C/S) architecture software to software based on browser-server (B/S) architecture, laying the foundation for domestic SaaS products. Starting from 2010, more internet companies in China entered the SaaS market, with a particular focus on the CRM field. After 2015, the Chinese enterprise-level SaaS industry entered a rapid growth phase, gaining public attention, and the demand from enterprises gradually shifted towards deep solutions that can address specific business pain points.
There are two different types of Software as a Service model, horizontal SaaS and vertical SaaS.
Horizontal SaaS is a structure well used by established cloud services such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Slack, Hubspot etc. It does not differentiate based on the customer’s industry and provides universal services. The services mainly include CRM (Customer Relationship Management), HRM (Human Resources Management), collaborative office automation (OA), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and more. Currently, CRM SaaS in the Chinese market differs from mainstream foreign vendors like Salesforce in terms of functionality. It focuses not only on sales process automation but also on marketing, helping enterprises accurately acquire customers and achieve efficient customer conversion.
Vertical SaaS provides services tailored to specific industries. Currently, it is mostly provided by traditional software vendors or industry solution providers who offer SaaS services in parallel. It is commonly divided into vertical markets such as finance, healthcare, e-commerce, and real estate. Generally, vertical markets are more segmented, and users tend to have higher stickiness to industry-specific products compared to horizontal models.
HR SaaS, in simple terms, refers to human resources service software. It belongs to the horizontal SaaS category and covers the entire chain of services including recruitment management, core HR management, training and development, talent management, talent assessment, and organizational development. In recent years, the increasing demand for blue-collar employment management has also led to a surge in attention and demand for flexible labor markets.
According to the data of China Insights Consultancy, the scale of China's digitized HCM industry reaches CNY18.9 billion in 2021, of which the market scale of cloud-based HCM (HR SaaS) is CNY5.5 billion, accounting for 29.2%. Accompanied by the gradual maturation of cloud computing-related technologies, China's cloud-based HCM market accelerated growth, and the proportion of cloud-based HCM in the total digital HCM market increased from 23% to 29% in 2017-2021, and the market share is expected to reach 52% by 2027.
Below EqualOcean lists some representative companies in the HR SaaS industry in China：
Beisen
Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Beijing, Beisen Holding Ltd（hereinafter referred to as "Beisen"） is the largest integrated HR SaaS and talent management platform in China. The platform combines talent management expertise with cloud computing technology to provide large and medium-sized enterprises with integrated SaaS software and services covering the entire process of talent management, including recruitment, performance, succession, core HR, and employee surveys. It also meets the personalized development needs of enterprises through its own PaaS platform.
In 2020, Beisen officially launched the integrated HR SaaS and talent management platform, iTalentX, which is the first and only platform in the industry to provide a full set of cloud-based applications.
According to the official website, Beisen has over 6,000 clients, including 70% of the Fortune China 500 companies. Every day, more than 150,000 HR professionals and 20 million employees use iTalentX. According to IDC research data, since 2016, Beisen has surpassed traditional international software giants and has consistently ranked first in the overall Chinese HCM SaaS market for seven consecutive years.
On April 13, 2023, Beisen was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (stock code: 9669.HK), becoming the “first Chinese HR SaaS listed company.” The issue price was set at HKD 29.70 per share, with a minimum lot size of 200 shares, raising a maximum of HKD 239 million.
eRoad
eRoad is the leading Human Capital Management (HCM) SaaS solution vendor in China. People+, their flagship cloud HCM platform, provides human resources, payroll, benefits, workforce management, performance management, and talent management capabilities in a single platform or though an integrated product. The company's platform helps clients manage the entire employee lifecycle, from recruiting and onboarding, to paying people and developing their careers. eRoad provides solutions for over 1000 companies worldwide,from mid-size businesses to global large organizations.
KNX
KNX was established in 2008 and is headquartered in Shanghai，China. It is a provider of integrated Human Capital Management (HCM) software solutions. Currently, KNK has established branch offices in 15 cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, and Sichuan, with a business and service network covering the whole country. It has a team of over 900 employees, consisting of professionals in human resources management, digital technology, research and development, and service.
Over the past fifteen years, KNK has deeply integrated digital technology with management logic, providing enterprises with integrated HCM SaaS product solutions. It offers services in two major areas: Personnel Management (Personnel Management Cloud, Flexible Employment Cloud, Intelligent Recruitment Cloud) and Talent and Organizational Management (Performance Cloud, Talent Development Cloud, Learning Cloud, Talent Assessment, Organizational Capability, Employee Surveys). These services meet the diverse needs of enterprises in HR digital management. The company has accumulated a large number of customer practices in industries such as intelligent manufacturing, the Internet, pharmaceuticals, finance, new retail, and real estate.
On December 8, 2022, KNK announced a strategic partnership with Moka. KNK will integrate its latest KNX HCM SaaS 9.0 product with Moka’s intelligent recruitment management system. It is estimated that this ecological collaboration will not only significantly shorten the delivery cycle of integrated HR SaaS products but also enhance compatibility and scalability to better meet the needs of enterprise customers.
Shen Jian, the founder and CEO of KNK, stated that this collaboration will improve the user experience of customers’ digital tools for managing the entire HR chain, enhance organizational management efficiency, and help enterprises achieve efficient digital transformation.
Li Guoxing, CEO of Moka, expressed that Moka has always adhered to an open ecological strategy and hopes to work with more partners to provide better user experience for HR SaaS products and services to enterprises.
Since its establishment, KNK has received a total of 8 rounds of investment from well-known institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Everbright Securities, Oriental Fortune Capital, and Shenwan Hongyuan Securities. The latest round of financing was Series D funding in August 2020, raising hundreds of millions of CNY.
Moka
Moka was established in 2015 and is headquartered in Beijing. It has offices in cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Wuhan, and Xiamen. Moka is dedicated to helping enterprises achieve digital transformation in talent recruitment and management. It has released two core products and solutions: Moka Recruitment and Moka People.
The new product, Moka Eva, is an AI-native HR SaaS product based on LLMs (large language models).
Leveraging the foundational capabilities of Moka Recruitment and Moka People, Moka Eva seamlessly integrates into various HR daily work scenarios. It can assist HR professionals in AI resume screening, customized interview questions for candidates, automatic writing of interview evaluations by interviewers, answering employees’ daily HR questions, automating requests for certificate issuance, and simplifying data statistics and analysis that used to take weeks into a matter of minutes.
To date, Moka has served over 1,500 clients, including Xiaomi, Didi, McDonald’s, Anta Group, Shanghai Pharmaceuticals, Panasonic, Shopee,etc. Its business covers various fields such as the Internet, chain retail, biopharmaceuticals, intelligent manufacturing, e-commerce, and education.
According to IDC data, Moka’s intelligent recruitment management system has been ranked first in the Chinese recruitment market share for two consecutive years from 2021 to 2022.
Since its establishment, Moka has received 6 rounds of financing from well-known investors such as GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, GL Ventures, Xiang He Capital, Blue Lake Capital, and Tiger Global Fund. The latest round of financing was Series C funding of USD 100 million in November 2021.
WorkTrans
WorkTrans was established in 2015 and is headquartered in Shanghai. It has branch offices in Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuxi, and other cities.
As a human resources management service provider specializing in improving workforce efficiency, WorkTrans is committed to provide services for enterprises, including workforce forecasting, personnel scheduling, personnel management, and workforce development. The company’s core product, the Workforce Cloud SaaS system, was launched in 2015. It addresses labor management issues such as managing a large number of dispersed stores, fluctuating labor demand, and frequent employee onboarding, transfers, and departures from the perspective of attendance and scheduling. It significantly assists in organizational management and efficiency improvement.
Currently, WorkTrans has provided practical workforce efficiency solutions for over 1,000 enterprises in more than 20 industries. Its services cover various sectors, including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, catering, real estate, biotechnology, and automotive.
In January 2021, WorkTrans raised USD 140 million in Series D funding round. The investors included Tencent, CICC, Sequoia China, Qiming Venture Partners, DCM, and Lightspeed China Partners, etc.
GaiaWorks
GaiaWorks was established in 2009 and is headquartered in Suzhou. It has branch offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Singapore. GaiaWorks is a Chinese company that provides global workforce management cloud services, focusing on solving four major issues in labor employment for enterprises: how many people are needed, how many people are actually there, how well they perform, and how to find people.
By using technological means to predict labor demand and schedule shifts, optimize and supplement flexible labor arrangements, manage attendance and time for diverse workforce, analyze and improve labor efficiency and sales effectiveness, and connect enterprises and frontline employees in the labor market, GaiaWorks achieves cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and compliance satisfaction.
Currently, GaiaWorks’s business has expanded to 24 countries and regions worldwide, serving nearly 1,700 companies, including BOE, Estée Lauder, LVMH, 7-Eleven, and more, with nearly 6 million employees. GaiaWorks leads the workforce management field with a customer renewal rate of over 99% and a high Net Promoter Score (NPS). In this year’s Fortune Global 500 list, nearly 10% of the companies are GaiaWorks’s clients, and among the top ten, four seats are occupied by GaiaWorks’s clients.
X-GIANTS
Founded in 2007, X-GIANTS International is an all-around HR solution provider based on technological and scientific data. Up to now, X-GIANTS International has nearly 60 branches including Mainland China, Australia, Canada, Germany and other regions and more than 1,000 professional consultants.
X-GIANTS International provides clients with executive search, recruitment process outsourcing, flexible staffing, personnel legal consultation, HR-SaaS and other solutions in 8 popular industries, empowering enterprises with a full range of talent services. X-GIANTS International has established long-term cooperation with more than 3,000 multinational corporations, large state-owned enterprises, domestic listed companies, fast-growing companies and non-profit organizations. In August 2019, X-GIANTS International won the A+ round of financing from CICC Capital and officially embarked on IPO.