Keka

Keka: HR, Payroll, and PSA Software Built for Growing Companies

Keka is a cloud-based human resources, payroll, and professional services automation (PSA) platform built for small and mid-sized businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets but aren't ready for enterprise-scale HR software. The company says it now serves more than 10,000 businesses worldwide (Keka, 2026), a jump from the roughly 5,500 companies it reported serving by the end of 2021 (YourStory, November 2022). Keka was founded by CEO Vijay Yalamanchili, with reporting split on the exact year: LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and multiple 2022 funding stories list 2015, while Wikipedia lists 2014 and credits Sashi Pagadala as a co-founder. The company is headquartered in Hyderabad, India, and lists US offices in Portland, Oregon, New York, and San Francisco (Keka, 2026). In November 2022, Keka raised $57 million in Series A funding from WestBridge Capital, a round multiple outlets described at the time as the largest Series A SaaS raise in India's history (Business Standard, YourStory, Entrackr, November 2022).

What Keka does

Keka's platform is organized into three areas: HR Cloud, Payroll Cloud, and PSA Cloud. HR Cloud covers core employee data, hiring and applicant tracking, performance check-ins, time and attendance, and a people analytics layer the company calls People Intelligence. Payroll Cloud handles pay processing, benefits administration, expense management, and compliance, with the US product covering payroll rules and tax filings across all 50 states (Keka, 2026). PSA Cloud is aimed at services-based teams and covers project time tracking, resource planning, billing and invoicing, and project-level analytics. Keka positions the whole suite as an alternative to stitching together separate point solutions for HR, payroll, and project management.

Where it fits

Keka is built for companies in roughly the 50 to 2,000-plus employee range, and the company frames it as purpose-built for that segment rather than a scaled-down enterprise tool (Keka, 2026). It's a fit for growing companies (especially those with project-based or professional services teams that need PSA functionality alongside standard HR and payroll) that want a single platform instead of separate systems for each function, and that want faster implementation timelines than large enterprise suites typically offer.

Why this matters for people leaders

Consolidated HR, payroll, and project platforms are on more people leaders' shortlists right now, largely because fragmented systems make it hard to see a clean, current picture of workforce cost, capacity, and performance in one place. For organizations focused on Culture, Performance, and Retention, that visibility matters: a platform that connects pay, performance check-ins, and day-to-day employee experience in one system gives HR and finance leaders a more reliable read on where to invest, and where turnover or burnout risk is building, than piecing the picture together from several disconnected tools.

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