XURPAS Inc. on Wednesday said it acquired a minority stake in Hong Kong-based Micro Benefits Ltd., a company providing mobile human-resources (HR) solutions to Fortune 500 companies in China, through its wholly owned subsidiary Micro Benefits Financial Consulting (Su Zhou) Co. Ltd.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Xurpas said it acquired a 23.53-percent stake in Micro Benefits for $10 million.
Micro Benefits, through MB China, began its operations in 2013, focusing on using mobile technology to address the growing problem of worker turnover at large manufacturing facilities in China.
Today the company’s proprietary platform, called Company Link, is used by close to 700,000 of its clients’ employees. By improving worker engagement, it has been proven to reduce turnover by as much as 15 percent.
Micro Benefits’s current roster of clients includes companies engaged in technology and consumer electronics, athletic footwear and sports equipment, and other large companies with manufacturing facilities in China.
Last year Xurpas acquired Storm Flex Systems Inc., which allows employees to exchange their standard employee benefits into a wide range of products and services, ranging from gadgets, travel packages and insurance.
“Combining the platforms of Micro Benefits and Storm Flex create a more compelling business solution fully intended to optimize their HR- technology platforms, which they could both offer to their clients,” said Nico Jose Nolledo, Xurpas CEO.
Storm Flex’s current roster of clients includes the Philippines’s leading local conglomerates, financial-services firms, business-process outsourcing companies and fast-moving consumer-goods companies.
“The investment into Micro Benefits signified Xurpas’s entry in other parts of Asia, strategically allowing Storm Flex to broaden its market scope to China and potentially expand its product reach from 30,000 employees to Micro Benefits’s fast-growing employee network of over half-a-million users,” Nolledo said.
“Expansion is one of our continuing priorities, and this is a strategic move that establishes China as a new and hugely lucrative frontier for our growing enterprise business, while simultaneously allowing us to offer new solutions to companies here in Asia.”