Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY), the famous HR/finance software vendor, has made a big new acquisition to support its platform. The company will acquire Vndly, a software platform for companies to manage contract workers. Vndly fits in well in Workday’s overall software suite, and the rationale behind the purchase is clear.

• Vndly is an Ohio-based startup. Workday will pay $510mn to buy it, marking one of Ohio’s biggest startup exits this year. Vndly has raised roughly $60mn from VCs, so a $510mn exit is very lucrative and more so for a startup founded just four years ago. 

• Before now, Vndly and Workday were already close allies. Vndly’s platform is integrated with Workday’s, with official certification to go. The Mason, Ohio-based startup is part of Workday’s global network of endorsed software partners, so Workday didn’t even have to look far to snatch its latest acquisition. 

• Vndly was founded in 2017 by two entrepreneurs, Shashank Saxena and Narayana Surabhi. Saxena is a former executive of retail giant Kroger, and Surabhi is an ex-employee of Computer Sciences Corporation, an IT consulting firm now known as DXC Technology. With good connections, they had raised $3mn from VCs before launching their product.

• Going from scratch to a $500mn+ exit in just four years of existence is no small feat, and Wndly has achieved that whilst headquartered in a state that isn’t a major tech hub; we can score a big +1 for Ohio’s tech scene with this one. The startup’s investors include Insight Partners, Okta Ventures, and software giant ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW).

With Vndly, Workday gets to expand from a platform that primarily serves full-time employees to one that also serves temporary staff, which is a large worker pool. It comes in handy at this time when tech employers are struggling to fill full-time roles and turning to the global freelance economy to make up for that.

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