EP70: Multiplier - How to Simplify Global Hiring

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

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‍This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for our weekly episodes. I’m your host, Lydia. Joining us today is Sagar Khatri, Co-founder and CEO of Multiplier. Welcome to the show, Sagar.

Sagar: Thank you, Lydia. I'm really excited to be here, and looking forward to the discussion today.

Building a Global Business with Borderless Employment

Lydia: So, tell us about your vision for Multiplier, Sagar. I know you started in 2020 and I can see that it has quickly grown to become a leader in this [industry.] What inspired you to build the platform for global employees?

Sagar: That's a very interesting question. Before I started Multiplier, I used to lead international expansion at another fast-growing company. And I was expanding to Australia, Singapore, and Japan as well. And it took me six to eight months to open a bank account in these developed markets in Asia, by any standard. Until you have a bank account and an entity in place, you can't really hire people and start a business. So, that's why I realized that going global is so broken, and decided to do something about it. That's where Multiplier came about.

The vision for Multiplier is believing in a world without limits. We believe in a world where no matter where you are based, as an employee, or where you are born as an individual, should not determine what opportunities you can have access to.

On the other hand, as an employer, no matter where you are incorporated as a business, you can have access to any talent in the world. So, we always wanted to change the statement where you say, "Hey, I want to find the best engineering talent in KL." We want to change it to, "I want to find the best engineering talent, period." It could be from KL, it could be from Singapore, it could be from London, it could be from New York, and so on, and so forth. So really, the world is your limit. The world is your oyster. Our tagline has always been: let's build something where we can empower companies and individuals to an infinite opportunity world.

Lydia: Borderless employment. This is definitely a strategic move for many companies. We've seen coming out of the pandemic, during and even precursor to the pandemic, we’ve seen so many changes moving in this direction and it can be a strategic move for many companies. But it’s often, as you said, complex. So, what might be some reasons, in your view, for companies to go down this route?

Sagar: Before talking about specific reasons, let me highlight a problem that our generation and the generations to come are facing, which is of talent crunch. We live in a world which is increasingly globalized, but the talent crunch is a very real problem. There is a conferee report, which says that by 2030, there will be a skilled talent crunch of 70 million folks. And this will lead to an unrealized loss of $8.5 trillion. That is a massive number. It’s bigger than the economy of Japan, Germany, and so on.

When they did that study, they only considered a few markets. One of the conclusions of this study was, “Hey, the only country in the world that will have a talent surplus would be India.” I cannot tell you how wrong that assumption has been. Because we have so many clients in India, who are also struggling for talent, and now trying to hire engineers in Serbia, Vietnam, and so on. So really, the idea is, today, every company needs to be global from day one, if they really want to have a chance to survive in this market and compete against their competitors. I’ll give you an example. I started this business in Singapore, we are 400 or 500 people. If I had to hire all these people in one building in Singapore, I wouldn’t know how to build this company.

Every company needs to go global from day one, not perhaps for goods and services or selling to those markets, but for accessing talent in that market.

So, if I’m a company based in Singapore, I might find great marketing talent in KL, great accounting talent in Bangkok, great engineering talent in Mumbai, Bangalore, and so on. That’s how I want to build my business today.

The other thing, Lydia, which is important, is increasing, as with Manatal, as well as Multiplier, the customer base is global in nature from day one. Like today, we are a two-and-a-half-year-old company. Today, we have customers in 60 or 70 countries. Now, how do you build a product that users use in so many countries? As you know, forget about the globe, even in Southeast Asia itself, every country behaves very differently. So, how do you build a product that is so easily adopted by companies across the globe? That’s where this idea of having talent from different countries, having perspectives, and having the right diversity becomes very, very important. So, two specific points; one is to sell to a global audience. You need to have a global audience internally as employees. Second, talent is really, really distributed, and for you to grow rapidly, for you to have the right skill set, you need to go where the talent is, not where you are located.

Hiring Anyone Anywhere: Three Clicks in One Minute

Lydia: How does the technology help you with accessing this kind of talent? We'll go into the technicalities. But in a nutshell, how does it help to reach this talent? Where do you know, how does it know where to go?

Sagar: That’s a good question, Lydia. So, there are two parts to it. One is, traditionally, to access talent in a country, you always needed to have a legal entity in that country. Let’s say I have a Singapore business and want to hire somebody in KL, Malaysia. I need to go and open an entity in KL, then I need to have a bank account, then I need to put in paid-up capital, then I need to register with the authorities, then I need to have a [COP SEC], then I need to hire an HR person, a payroll person, an HR software, a legal person to draft employment contracts. After all of these shenanigans are done, you will be able to employ one person legally in Malaysia. That’s how traditional hiring has worked.

We wanted to change that. We said, “How can we use technology and infrastructure in today’s world to enable companies to employ anyone anywhere in three clicks and one minute?” So, this is what we have done. We have set up this infrastructure across the globe. We have set up entities across the globe, we have set up bank accounts in more than 100 countries, and we have set up capabilities to run payroll, insurance, provident fund, taxes, employment agreements, leave expense, you name it, in all these countries. On top of that infrastructure, we have placed a beautiful product, where now you just go and click. You find your own talent. But once you find the talent, you put in your details around what is the salary level of the talent, their names, demographic details, and so forth. And in three clicks, you will have a beautifully generated employment agreement that you can sign there, and then their payroll can start. You have eliminated all these costs, eliminated all this time that it used to take to start the business, which is, as I shared before, one of the reasons that I started this business.

So, that has always been something that we have been excited about: how to enable companies to go global by hiring in international markets without hassle in three clicks and a minute.

How Multiplier Solves the Problem of Hiring Global Talent

Lydia: That’s eight months moving to three clicks in one minute. That's a huge achievement right there. In terms of its impact on recruitment, I understand from what you said that recruitment is separate in this instance. What might be the impact of this technology on recruitment practices?

Sagar: This is a very interesting question, and to get context on the impact of this on recruitment, it’s important to understand the history of recruitment and how it has evolved.

Go back 10 years and think that there was no LinkedIn. How did people recruit? They had to put job ads in newspapers, right? That was one of the prevalent ways of hiring people. There were some job advertisement websites and so on. And go back 20 years, the concept of talent acquisition teams did not exist. All these enterprise companies always relied on recruitment companies to hire people. So, from there, in 10, 15, 20 years, we have made so much progress. Today, we live in a world where we have LinkedIn, and we can get access to any talent in the world. Now, from small to big enterprises, they have something called talent acquisition teams, internally. So, how has recruitment changed? Recruitment has become a lot easier. It has become global, and it has largely been internalized and done inside the company.

So what has been the impact of that? Essentially, that’s where the opportunities for companies like Multiplier started to exist, where now when I’m sitting in KL, for example, I find this amazing CV on my table, this person reached out to me on LinkedIn, he or she happens to be in Serbia. I keep saying Serbia because we have a big engineering team in Serbia, and I recommend all viewers or listeners, rather, to check out Eastern European countries for tech talent, they have beautiful tech talent there.

Now, going back to the story, you get that CV and you really like the person, you shouldn’t be faced with the problem, “Hey, but he or she is in Serbia. Do I need to bring them over to KL?” That’s the problem that we intend to solve. And the problem arose because companies like Zoom came into existence, what we call remote working. With companies like LinkedIn coming into existence, phenomena became a phenomenon of talent acquisition teams.

Overcoming the Cost, Complexity, and Risk of Global Hiring

Lydia: There are plenty of specific challenges that organizations face when it comes to hiring international talent. It can be costly, it can be very complex as well. So are there any specific challenges that organizations face when they hire talent globally, especially today?

Sagar: You are absolutely right. When an organization wants to hire globally, you’ll be surprised that a lot of it, for companies that are mature, is a board decision. It has to go to the board for them to approve because when you want to open a legal entity, it’s a really serious corporate matter.

So, back in the day before we tried to solve this problem, expanding globally or hiring talent internationally was complex, costly, clunky, and risky. Why was it costly? Because you had to go and set up an entity, and put in paid-up capital, you had to do C.O.P Sec, audit, law, and employment contracts. It was really $100,000, $200,000, $300,000. In some countries, the paid-up capital itself is half a million US dollars. Then it took time. I told you it took eight months in Australia and Japan. They are the biggest economies in our part of the world, the most developed ones. Then think about countries that are more emerging economies. Then it’s risky. It’s a compliance business. You can’t go wrong. When you file one document less, you get fined.

Compliance is not just about monetary, it’s about keeping your record clean and complying with the local authorities. Because tomorrow, if you want to do business with global customers, they want to check that you’re fully compliant as an organization.

And it’s risky. Actually, you will be surprised. A lot of companies require being educated. Sometimes, companies in Singapore would say, “Hey, I have this accountant in KL, and let me just send the salary right away.” That is almost money laundering. So, we had to educate people that; yes, you’re a small business and you’re not getting caught. But this has real tax implications for you, as well as the employee. You cannot just send money from Singapore to KL. You need to either have a local entity there and employment contracts, or you have to go through companies like Multiplier. We see ourselves as a global compliance and payments partner for multinational companies so that our brand promise is we will make sure you’re compliant.

Multiplier: A Necessity for Global Hiring

Lydia: And as you said, it involves education. So, how do you go about it, is there active education that is ongoing for the customers or is there a platform that enables them to understand the risks that are involved?

Sagar: So there's no straight answer to that. That is our battle to fight as a company, and doing this podcast is also a way of solving that, in a manner of speaking. So, a few things. One is that some enterprise segments have always known about these kinds of solutions. Although COVID did a lot of harm to individuals, and we are extremely sorry about that, one thing that it has done is it has brought the topic of global and remote workforce to the forefront. And then when people were faced with that problem, they had to find a solution, they had to educate themselves. So, some of that market awareness happened during the COVID period. And that has really helped the business

During the COVID, what happened is, somebody said, "Hey, I cannot be locked down in Singapore, I'm going back to Vietnam." And the company said, "Oh, we don't know how to pay in Vietnam." So they had to find us. A lot of times, when they were hiring in India, from Singapore, Singapore didn't allow people to come in at that point in time. So, they had to hire them from Singapore, and Western markets as well, a lot of markets were closed during COVID. So, that was something that has really helped.

The other thing that is really helping is this talent crunch phenomenon, coupled with closing borders. If you think about the world today, it is more divided, it is more closed than it used to be. We are entering a geopolitical era where we have a clash of superpowers. Countries in Singapore, we say Singaporeans first, in the US, we say America first. So, nationalism is on the rise, and what is happening is, because of that, mobility has been severely reduced.

Now, talk about Singapore, we require 100,000 software developers every year and the universities there only produce 3,000 and you can practically not import the rest of the 97,000 annually, So they don’t want to and obviously for the right reasons, they want to give the jobs to the locals. It's an expensive country to live in. So that's the idea. This is where we come in. And this is Singapore is a small country. I'm saying if you go to the US, you magnify, you go to California, it's a three or four-trillion-dollar economy, the problem is even more magnified. So that's the idea, where talent crunch, coupled with closing borders, is also a trend that is helping.

The third trend that is really helping us grow is the rise of the gig economy. We live in a world where the idea of me being tied to a job and going to the office five days a week is becoming foreign to a bigger segment, especially as Gen Z and millennials form a part of most of the workforce. The new-age folks who graduated almost roughly around the COVID time, don't understand this concept. So, when they become a majority in the workforce, with the rise of the gig economy, folks wanting to do different jobs at the same time, folks wanting to work for different countries at the same time, and doing something that they really enjoy doing, rather than being tied to a particular job, has also been one phenomenon. I have no choice but to work with these folks because they have the right skill set.

Hire and Onboard Talent: a Walkthrough of Multiplier’s Features

Lydia: Tech talent becomes even more niche as we go along. More and more specific skills are needed in the tech field, and you can’t find them everywhere.

We also talked about the three clicks in one minute. But just going further into it. So how does the platform work to simplify that process in this is a bit more technical and what the steps and more process might be like?

Sagar: I previously shared that we have built a network of entities, and bank accounts in every country, and on top of that, we have built this platform. So, how does the platform work? Once the master service agreement is signed, the customer has access to the platform. They come and they basically have to find the talent first. Let’s say a Singapore company found somebody in KL that they want to onboard. They can go to the platform, they can click on hire and onboard, and the first screen will show them to put in the details of this candidate. So, this is their name, their details, when are they joining, what are their job responsibilities, then they go to the next screen, they have the remuneration screen, they put their salaries, and the platform is so plugged in that it will give them gross to net calculations for both employer and employee right away and you can add their joining bonus, probation period, and more.

Then they go to the next screen, which gives them the option to select the health insurance for them and their family. So they have multiple options to choose from, depending on their seniority or whatever their company policies are. The last screen is very simple, where you can add their notice periods, and their non-competent in a plug-and-play manner. Once that is done, an employment contract will be generated, which you just customize and it’s global and also bilingual wherever it’s required in a country like Indonesia, and you just sign it. That’s it. You are employed in that company, and the payroll gets started from whatever date you have entered into the employment agreement.

How Multiplier Saves Millions of Dollars for Companies with Global Hiring

Lydia: That is a clear game change in the technology. It's so simplified that it just makes it so much easier for any company that would want to quickly hire somebody who's abroad and not so accessible physically. So, do you have any significant success stories you might like to share? Especially impact on business?

Sagar: It’s beautiful and it’s almost addictive to the point, because anybody who has opened entities and done payroll, knows how painful it is. How error-prone it is. It’s almost like it creates anxiety in you, like, are you doing the right thing? As you imagine, so many interviews have been done globally, but every single time a new person does it, they still have so much anxiety, because they don’t know if they’re doing it in the right manner, or even if they need to do it. So, we are happy to help with those scenarios because I’ve gone through that myself.

We have worked with customers in 60-70 countries. Maybe just a couple of cases in Singapore. We work with Singapore's leading neo-banking platform, where we’ve helped them build their entire product, engineering, and marketing teams across Southeast Asia and India and we have good relations with them. We’ve said that we have saved them a million dollars a year. Now, this is in addition to having access to opportunities to hire talent globally. In addition to that, by advising them on their talent strategy that they should hire engineers here, marketing folks here, and product folks here, they have saved a million dollars a year and it’s one of the fastest-growing companies. Sometimes we tend to underestimate the impact of an intangible, which is talent, on our business. You know, the right people make or break the business. Let me say as a CEO, we have 400-500 people today, with a slightly, relatively scaled organization.

You should get the right people wherever they are, paying the right price because they will change the nature of your business.

We also have companies in the US, we have a bunch of companies in Southeast Asia and India, that we have helped to expand to the US market so that they can access the US customers without being exposed to US compliance. Talking about a specific case study, there is a property platform in Singapore, which we have helped run their global payroll, and consolidated their global payroll in 16 countries. So, that’s the idea, where we can help you employ people where you don’t have entities. But now we also can run your global payroll and payments where you have your own entities. We can also help you pay your contractors. So, the idea is we can help you consolidate all your global payouts to your employees and contractors alike.

Creating a Better Product and Customer Experience

Lydia: You mentioned something very key, which is having the right people will definitely enable your business, to grow by leaps and bounds. Not only that, but you will see the results that come from that and I also understand that Multiplier has a diverse team with more than 50 nationalities. So, what kind of impact has it brought on the business? How important is it to have a diverse team like this?

Sagar: I wouldn’t know any other way to do it, to be honest. Like, today, we have employees in 35 countries and 60-65 nationalities. As I highlighted before, to serve customers in so many countries, we needed to have folks who bring in that cultural diversity or geographical diversity, but it’s an amazing experience. I find myself to be super lucky to be able to work with so many nationalities. It’s beautiful.

One of our pitches to somebody who we are trying to recruit to join Multiply is, “Come and attend our town hall.” In our town hall, we have people dialing in from every part of the world. It’s morning somewhere, it’s late in the night, it’s afternoon, and so on. Different people voice different kinds of opinions, some have questions about a topic, and some have other questions. It’s just beautiful to see the amalgamation of so many great talents coming from such diversity. So, I absolutely enjoy it.

Also, It’s super important for our business to be successful and the team to be equally diverse. We have a very healthy male-female ratio in our leadership team, and It's very, very important because, most of our buyers are HR folks, and a lot of them are also female leaders. If you don’t have those opinions in your boardroom, how do you plan to sell a product to them? So, it has worked out that way. But I’m so glad it has worked out that way. I really enjoy it so much.

Lydia: This diverse nationalities, I mean, nationalities being one. But diversity extends to so many different aspects but intergenerational as well. So, do you have more younger folks interested in joining? Or is there an even spread?

Sagar: Good question. I haven’t looked at the data for some time. Now, we have very, very senior leaders who have 20-30 or 40 years of experience. We also have advisors who are even more senior. We also have a lot of young folks who have just graduated a couple of years back. So, we have quite a bit of spread there.

We love to work with folks who share our company values of trust, transparency, and thoroughness. The first value really guides us on what we do with talent, which is trust. We love to hire people who have done this before and will come here and do it in the shortest possible time without any guidance. We love to give full autonomy. That’s where we say, “Hey, you’ve done selling for a couple of years, come sell for us. You’ve done product for one year, come do product with us. You’ve done ops for 15 years, come do ops for us.” So really, that’s the mindset that we have when we think about hiring at Multiplier.

The Future of Work is Global, Distributed, and AI-enhanced

Lydia: We talked a little bit about the future of work and the talent crunch that's coming in 2030, based on that research from conferee. That's not very far off. So, what trends do you see in the future for HR and talent acquisition practice with technology playing such a key role in this industry? Not just technology, but AI as well.

Sagar: No, absolutely. I think one thing is, that teams will be global. I’m fully convinced that the future of work is global and distributed. For you to grow faster, the war for talent will intensify and we’ll need to hire people where they are in countries like Vietnam, Ukraine, Brazil, and all of those places.

The second aspect that I firmly believe in is the concept of being tied to an office from nine to six is going away. There will be a concept which is work-life integration. There’s a concept called work-life balance, which I also think is fading away because we need work-life integration. Like, I may start work at 6 am, but from 2 to 4 pm, I might choose to be in the gym and that’s all right. Or I might go and pick my kids up from two to 4 pm. So, that’s the idea of work-life integration with a lot of work moving to mobile.

With tools like Zoom, Slack, and Atlassian, people will be able to work remotely, and it will enable folks to do the work in a safe manner. It also leads to the rise of async work, which is the idea that I will work on my own time. So, the number of meetings that you will do in a sync manner will reduce. The urge to pick up the phone and call somebody will be reduced. You will do your work, you will use voice notes, and Loom videos so that you can transfer the information and somebody picks it up and once we get there, the productivity will really rise.

So, that leads to the next topic, which is rising productivity and we can cover the AI topic here as well. These tools and AI, also being a tool people are generally scared, a lot of people are scared about AI taking their jobs. I don’t believe in that. I think folks with the power of AI will be better placed than folks who are not ready to accept AI. In fact, every engineer at Multiplier today uses AI to increase their productivity. Has AI replaced any engineers in the company? I don’t think so. But has it increased the productivity of everybody who works at Multiplier? Absolutely. In the engineering and product team? So, that’s the idea, productivity will be really, really tested. How much can one individual deliver with all these tools at their disposal? They don’t have to move, they don’t have to travel, they don’t have to be in a traffic jam for two hours, then what can they deliver? So, the productivity and AI debate will really intensify.

There is also the rise of the gig economy, which is really one person, multiple jobs. I think that will also gain traction. We live in a world where talent crunch is already painful.

We are going towards a phase where there will be too many opportunities, but there will not be enough people skilled to do those jobs. So one person, with the right skills and productivity, can provide their skill set as a service to multiple companies. I’m very excited about that.

Lydia: Yeah. we're seeing hyper-efficiency behind this decentralized workforce as well. As you clearly pointed out, and you took the fact that we are very sharp and on point with what we give to our customers and teammates, I think it is definitely going to be interesting to see how efficiency plays into productivity in this game. So, thank you so much, Sagar, for your time and these great insights that you've shared, and for anyone listening in who wants to pick up a conversation with you, where can they find you?

Sagar: Thank you for having me, Lydia. It was a beautiful conversation. You can reach me at sagar@usemultiplier.com. Please reach out to me. I would love to chat about any topic. You want to talk about the future of work, you want to talk about using Multiply, you want to talk about anything in general, I’m always up for a chat, so please reach out to me.

Lydia: Thank you so much. We’ve been in conversation with Sagar Khatri, Co-founder and CEO of Multiplier. Thank you for joining us and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All-In Recruitment.