Bayzat, a provider of insurance and HR solutions in the MENA region, announced it has secured an additional $5 million in funding led by Silicon Badia, a VC firm based in the MENA region and in the US, alongside existing investors BECO Capital and Hamed Kanoo Co LLC.

This additional funding brings Bayzat’s total funding in this Series A-1 round to over $8 million after the company received its initial funding tranche earlier this year from strategic investors.

Bayzat was founded by entrepreneurs Talal Bayaa and Brian Habibi and is currently headquartered Dubai. It has so far 18,000 lives insured through their site.

According to Bayaa, CEO, the desire to allocate more resources towards developing his firm’s HR software is a decision borne of experience. “The Middle East’s technology market is undeveloped, particularly in the form of SaaS. Companies are restricted to paper-driven archaic processes because they are not aware of any alternatives. Inefficient procedures like manual employee record management and payroll are a drain on businesses and their employees, and yet it continues to flourish here; one of the most forward-thinking countries on the planet! It’s a pain point we see across the region that desperately needs resolving.”

“Bayzat’s dual strategy and core focus on building unique technology for this market is what attracted us to this business initially,” said Namek Zu'bi, managing partner, Silicon Badia when discussing their investment.

Since its launch in 2015, Bayzat has experienced exceptional year-on-year growth (over 350 percent increase in revenue). Supplemented by the region’s switch to mandatory insurance and the mounting need for technology solutions for both insurance and business processes, the startup has succeeded in capturing a portion of a $30 billion premium market in the MENA region.

With a firm foothold on the current insurance landscape, Bayzat has started bolstering its efforts to refining its burgeoning HR automation platform —Bayzat Benefits.

Since Bayzat Benefit’s induction, the platform has introduced a host of different tools and automation prospects to alleviate mundane company administrative work. These include OCR technology, which gives users the ability to extract important information (from passports of Emirates IDs) directly from scanned images, and enables professionals from all departments to upload sensitive data quickly directly onto Bayzat’s platform.

Bayzat’s latest addition, payroll, looks to streamline a pivotal area for finance and HR management. Employees uploaded onto Bayzat Benefits’ will have their salary and commission information stored and configured automatically, allowing finance and HR professionals to allocate more time to nurturing their other responsibilities.