Salesforce Leads $15M Investment in Darwinbox - HR Tech News

Darwinbox, a provider of a cloud-based human resource management platform, has secured $15 million in a recent funding round as the India-based company aims to accelerate its growth within India and across Southeast Asian nations.

This latest investment – a Series C round – for the Hyderabad-based company was spearheaded by Salesforce Ventures, the investment division of the American technology leader. This represents a relatively infrequent investment by Salesforce Ventures in the Asian market. Current investors, including Lightspeed India and Sequoia Capital India, also contributed to the round, bringing the total funding raised by the five-year-old startup to approximately $35 million.

Currently, over 500 organizations – notably including Tokopedia, Indorama, JG Summit Group, Zilingo, Zalora, Fave, Adani, Mahindra, Kotak, TVS, National Stock Exchange, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, Dr.Reddy’s, Nivea, Puma, Swiggy and Bigbasket – utilize Darwinbox’s HR platform to serve more than one million employees across 60 countries. This is an increase from roughly 200 companies operating in 50 countries in late 2019, as stated by Chaitanya Peddi, co-founder of Darwinbox, in a discussion with TechCrunch.

Peddi expressed that the company has consistently looked to Salesforce as a source of inspiration, and receiving investment from the technology giant is akin to receiving affirmation from a parental figure, he explained.

This funding round concludes what has been the most successful year for the startup, which initially faced challenges as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread throughout Asia. While the company experienced initial setbacks as its clients adapted to the global pandemic, the last two quarters have been its strongest on record, according to Peddi.

Since its last funding round in September 2019, the startup’s revenue has increased by 300%. “Within the HR technology and SaaS sector, we now rank second only to SAP and Oracle in India in terms of revenue,” he noted.

Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed India, an early investor in the company, commented that Darwinbox has become the leading human capital management solution for Asian conglomerates, governmental bodies, rapidly expanding businesses, and multinational corporations undergoing digital transformation.

Darwinbox’s platform is designed to manage the complete employee lifecycle, from recruitment to retirement. It facilitates the onboarding of new employees, tracks performance, monitors employee turnover, and enables continuous feedback.

The platform also offers its clients a social networking feature to foster employee connections and an AI-powered assistant for tasks such as requesting time off or scheduling meetings via voice commands on their mobile devices.

Peddi stated that the newly acquired funds will be used to expand into additional countries, particularly in emerging markets within the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, and to enhance its product offerings. “We will be capitalizing on the capabilities of our platform to achieve further advancements. As a product-focused company, our primary emphasis will remain on innovation in this area,” he said. The company is also considering potential acquisitions of smaller companies to support its growth, he added.

“India possesses one of the world’s youngest populations, and it is projected to represent over 18% of the global working-age population by 2050,” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India, in a statement. “This underscores the importance of technology platforms like Darwinbox, which concentrate on workforce management. I am pleased that Salesforce is supporting Darwinbox as they continue to develop and innovate in this field.”

Alex Kayyal, partner and head of international at Salesforce Ventures, shared with TechCrunch in an interview that the firm supports its portfolio companies by connecting them with its customer base, leadership team, and network, and by assisting them in scaling their operations.

“We maintain a customer base that is highly innovative and actively seeking cloud-based solutions and digital transformation. Therefore, we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to introduce companies like Darwinbox to our customers,” said Kayyal. Salesforce Ventures is actively exploring further investment prospects in India, he indicated.