Waagu makes a video collaboration tool, Loookit, that enables businesses to empower their digital transformation with on-demand, rich content, web, and mobile customer interactions.
Industry: Computer Software
Company Size: 11-50
Countries: US, Japan, India
Year Founded: 2015
“As an entrepreneur running a small company, I just don’t have the time and resources to manage employees in other countries. With GoGlobal, we don’t have to worry about all the different regulations and HR related local rules. That is completely taken off our hands. We rely on GoGlobal to advise us and help us through that process. That’s a big, big benefit for us.”
Nagesh Challa
Co-Founder & CEO
The Need
Waagu is a computer software startup headquartered in California, USA. Early in our journey with Waagu, we found ourselves with customers who were interested in our product in Japan. And of course, having done business in Japan before, I didn’t hesitate to address their needs and engage with customers no matter where they are.
As we continued to discuss customer needs, we found a need for having local support in case questions or support issues came up. We needed to get somebody on the ground in Japan with language skills who could assist our customers.
GoGlobal’s Expertise in Japan is a Game-Changer
The benefit lies in the equivalency of it all. For our teams to understand what we’re doing here, then translate our intent to our employees in Japan. To take our norms and apply them in the local country is a significant benefit.
With GoGlobal, I can interact with someone from their team in my time zone and locally. We can ensure the equivalency of what we are doing here (in the USA) is also consistent for our employee in Japan. If I would like to pay a bonus or give extra vacation time, these are things I can handle locally instead of trying to talk to someone in Japan.
Support with International Compliance
We don’t have to worry about local rules, regulations, policies, etc. because GoGlobal takes care of all of that.
For example, in Japan, between taxes and insurance, how do you manage all of that and know who pays who? Knowing about the vacation policies we need to conform to is also important for us.
These HR functions are fairly demanding depending on where you’re located. Not having to worry about that is a huge benefit, especially for a small startup like us.
GoGlobal Makes It Easy to Expand to Japan
If you’re a company based outside of Japan and you want to enter Japan with adding people on the ground – managing, setting up, hiring, and doing all that work by yourself will be very challenging.
Whether you’re a big company or a small startup, I would say getting a partner like GoGlobal would be helpful. It’s a very complicated process and if you can take the HR functions and people management off the table so you can focus on your business, the investment will be worth it. In the future, we look to hire more people in Japan and expand into other countries. We will definitely talk to GoGlobal to help us.
Check out our What is an EOR? guide or contact us to talk with an international HR expert about how the EOR hiring model can help with your global expansion plans.