Darwinbox, a human resources software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup, has raised $4 million (about Rs 25 crore) in a series-A round of funding led by Lightspeed India Partners. The company plans to leverage the new infusion of capital for product innovation and market expansion.
Founded by Rohit Chennamaneni, Jayant Paleti and Chaitanya Peddi in August 2015, Darwinbox is a cloud-based integrated HR technology product that takes care of all HR needs across the employee cycle. The founding team consists of IIT, IIM and XLRI alumni, who later worked with companies such as McKinsey, Deloitte, Google and EY.
Darwinbox HR is a cloud based integrated HR Technology product which takes care of all HR needs across the employee life cycle – Recruitment, Core transactions (Leaves, Attendance, Directory), Payroll, Employee Movement, Employee Engagement, Talent Management and People Analytics. Darwinbox HR engages and empowers employees on one side while automating and simplifying HR processes on the other
The funding round recently raised has been backed by the India-dedicated fund of California-based Lightspeed Venture Partners, apart from some existing investors including Endiya Partners, Mohandas Pai’s 3one4 Capital and StartupXseed Ventures also participated in the round.
With this fresh fund, the company plans to leverage the new infusion of capital for product innovation and market expansion.
Lightspeed Venture Partners has been investing in enterprise products globally since the past two decades and this is one of their first enterprise bets in India. They want to gain some experience from the Indian soil and apply it further in other countries.
Their Indian bets are safe bets which have proved to be quite successful investments in startups such as Byju’s and OYO, Lightspeed Venture Partners is known for its investment in enterprise cloud company Nutanix, which went for an IPO in September last year.
Darwinbox attracted interest of the investors because at all sizes and in all industries, businesses succeed when their employees and managers are engaged for maximum productivity and potential. And human capital management software is core to the success of every business, reveals Dev Khare, partner at Lightspeed India Advisors Partners in a media statement. He is likely to be seen on the company’s board.
Darwinbox is said to be leading the change in maintaining records with its highly user-friendly and configurable user interface. Its traction on-board has approximately 40 clients in the past one year with over 100,000 employees using its platform. The clientele reflects names like Paytm, Nivea, Delhivery, Swiggy and Godrej’s CDPL (Creamline Dairy Products). Serving mid and large enterprises in India and it expects to add another 100 clients in the next one year.
They aim to design a worldclass product for Indian enterprises and also wish to expand to other markets in Asia and have a global footprint eventually.
Source: BW Disrupt
