Kenjo

Overview
Kenjo is a Berlin-headquartered HR technology company that operates an all-in-one workforce-management SaaS platform for small and medium-sized businesses, with a particular focus on frontline and deskless workforces in service, production, industrial and commercial sectors. Founded in 2019 by David Padilla (Chief Executive Officer) and Gonzalo Abruna (Chief Technology Officer), the company runs from Berlin with additional offices in Madrid, Zurich and Mexico City. Its product combines core HR, recruitment, performance management and, distinctively, shift planning, time tracking and payroll preparation for hourly and shift-based teams.

Why this entity matters
Kenjo is one of the clearest expressions in the DACH HR-tech landscape of the frontline-worker software thesis: that the largest under-digitised HR segment in Europe is not office-based knowledge workers, whose employers already run Personio, Workday or SAP SuccessFactors, but service, retail, hospitality and industrial workforces where scheduling, time capture and pay preparation dominate the workflow. Kenjo also matters as a live case study of a bilingual German-Spanish operating footprint - Berlin plus Madrid plus a Latin American beachhead in Mexico City - which is unusual among European HR-tech peers and gives the company a legitimate expansion pathway beyond Europe. Finally, its cap table connects it into the German and Austrian consumer-fintech unicorn founder network via named angels from wefox and N26, which is part of why the company is a recurring reference entity in Startuprad.io interviews about the state of European HR software.

Company history and product
Kenjo was founded in Berlin in 2019 by David Padilla and Gonzalo Abruna. Padilla, originally from Madrid, previously worked as a developer at Swiss e-commerce group DeinDeal in Zurich before moving into HR software; the founding thesis was that European SMBs, and in particular those employing shift-based teams, needed a single people-operations suite rather than the stack of point tools they typically ran. The product covers employee records and the digital personnel file, organisational charts, recruitment and applicant tracking, performance management, onboarding and offboarding, pulse surveys, holiday and absence management, and, importantly for its target segment, shift planning, time tracking and payroll preparation for hourly and shift-based workforces. Reference customers cited by trade press include Dominos, Jaguar and Land Rover, and the company has publicly described a customer base of more than 1,000 companies typically in the 20 to 500 employee range.

On the funding side, in October 2020 Kenjo raised approximately EUR 5.1 million in seed funding led by Swiss-German venture firm Redalpine, with participation from angels including Julian Teicke of wefox and Maximilian Tayenthal of N26. In September 2023 the company announced a EUR 8.8 million Series A to accelerate expansion of its HR and employee-engagement platform, with international coverage highlighting a planned expansion into Latin America and reinforcement of the frontline-worker product. Aggregate disclosed funding across the two rounds is of the order of EUR 14 million; the roughly USD 15 million total published by third-party databases is consistent with that figure and should be treated as an approximation rather than an audited number.

Role in the DACH startup and technology ecosystem
Kenjo sits in the second-tier German HR-tech peer set below Personio and alongside companies such as HeavenHR, Kombo, HRlab, Sage HR and a wider European group including Factorial in Spain. Its differentiator is the shift-planning and deskless-worker focus, and its geographic footprint spans two of Europe's largest venture markets. It is a useful counterpoint to the Personio narrative in Startuprad.io coverage of German HR software: where Personio built primarily around office workers and expanded into payroll and adjacent modules, Kenjo built around scheduling, attendance and payroll preparation and adjacent employee-engagement layers. It is also part of the wider frontline-workforce software cluster in which industrial-AI companies such as KNOWRON pursue the same buyer through a different tool.

Selected relationships and affiliations
Founders: David Padilla (CEO) and Gonzalo Abruna (CTO), 2019. Lead institutional investor: Redalpine (seed round). Named angel investors: Julian Teicke, founder of wefox, and Maximilian Tayenthal, co-founder of N26. Offices: Berlin, Madrid, Zurich, Mexico City. Reference customers cited in trade press: Dominos, Jaguar, Land Rover. Sector peer set: Personio, HeavenHR, Kombo, HRlab, Sage HR, Factorial. Related Startuprad.io entities: https://www.startuprad.io/entities/personio , https://www.startuprad.io/entities/wefox and https://www.startuprad.io/entities/knowron .

Startuprad.io relevance
Kenjo is a T2 reference entity in the Startuprad.io graph for the DACH HR-tech, SMB software and frontline-workforce clusters. It has appeared as the subject of a dedicated Startuprad.io founder interview with CEO David Padilla, framed as Germany's effortless all-in-one HR software startup, and it is referenced in Startuprad.io monthly DACH news roundups from 2022 and 2023. Its Wix tag currently carries four tagged posts, in line with the postCount=4 baseline for this entity in the tracking data.

Public source context
Sources: the Kenjo corporate website https://www.kenjo.io , the LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/company/kenjo , tech.eu coverage of both the seed round at https://tech.eu/brief/kenjo-seed-funding/ and the September 2023 Series A at https://tech.eu/2023/09/18/berlin-based-kenjo-8-8m-hrtech-to-latin-america/ , EU-Startups coverage of the Series A at https://www.eu-startups.com/2023/09/berlin-based-hr-tech-kenjo-closes-e8-8-million-to-bolster-frontline-workers-in-the-digital-era/ , FinSMEs coverage of the 2020 seed round, the Crunchbase and Dealroom company profiles, and the Startuprad.io coverage archive summarised below. No unicorn-level valuation is claimed for Kenjo; aggregate funding is disclosed at approximately EUR 14 million across the two rounds.

Startuprad.io coverage of Kenjo

Kenjo appears in the following Startuprad.io interviews, news and analysis.

Meet Germany's Effortless All-In-One HR Software Startup Kenjo - Founder Interview
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 31 August 2026
Coverage type: Interview
https://www.startuprad.io/post/meet-germany-s-effortless-all-in-one-hr-software-startup-kenjo-founder-interview

This Month in German, Swiss, and Austrian (GSA) Startups - June 2022
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 31 August 2026
Coverage type: News
https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-june-2022

This Month in German, Swiss, and Austrian (GSA) Startups - September 2023
Published: 28 September 2023
Last updated: 27 August 2026
Coverage type: News
https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-september-2023

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Canonical record: https://www.startuprad.io/entities/kenjo