INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
An Indian SaaS startup, which is increasingly courting clients from outside of the country, just raised a significant amount of capital to
expand its business.Hyderabad-based Darwinbox, which operates a cloud-based human resource management platform, said on Thursday it has
raised $15 million in a new financing round
The Series B round — which moves the firm’s total raise to $19.7 million — was led by Sequoia India and saw participation from
existing investors Lightspeed India Partners, Endiya Partners, and 3one4 Capital.More than 200 firms including giants such as adtech firm
InMobi, fintech startup Paytm, drink conglomerate Bisleri, automobile maker Mahindra, Kotak group, and delivery firms Swiggy and
Milkbasket use Darwinbox’s HR platform to serve half a million of their employees in 50 nations, Rohit Chennamaneni, cofounder of
Darwinbox, told TechCrunch in an interview.The startup, which competes with giants such as SAP and Oracle, said its platform enables high
level of configurability, ease of use, and understands the needs of modern employees
“The employees today who have grown accustomed to using consumer-focused services such as Uber and Amazon are left disappointed in their
experience with their own firm’s HR offerings,” said Gowthami Kanumuru, VP Marketing at Darwinbox, in an interview.Darwinbox’s HR
platform offers a range of features including the ability for firms to offer their employees insurance and early salary as loans
Its platform also features social networks for employees within a company to connect and talk, as well as an AI assistant that allows them
to apply for a leave or set up meetings with quick voice commands from their phone.“The AI system is not just looking for certain keywords
If an employee tells the system he or she is not feeling well today, it automatically applies a leave for them,” she said.Darwinbox’s
platform is built to handle onboarding new employees, keeping a tab on their performance, monitor attrition rate, and maintain an ongoing
Or as Kanumuru puts it, the entire “hiring to retiring” cycle.One of Darwinbox’s clients is L-T, which is tasked with setting up
subways in many Indian cities
L-T is using Darwin’s geo-fencing feature to log the attendance of employees
“They are not using biometric punch machine that is typically used by other firms
Instead, they just require their 1,200 employees to check-in from the workplace using their phones,” said Kanumuru.Additionally, Darwinbox
is largely focusing on serving companies based in Asia as it believes Western companies’ solutions are not a great fit for people here,
The startup began courting clients in Southeast Asian markets last year.“Our growth is a huge validation for our vision,” she said
“Within six months of operations, we had the delivery giant Delhivery with over 23,000 employees use our platform.”In a statement to
TechCrunch, Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed Venture, said, “there is a new trend of SaaS companies targeting the India/SE Asia markets
This trend is gathering steam and is disproving the conventional wisdom that Asia-focused SaaS companies cannot get to be big companies
We firmly believe that Asia-focused SaaS companies can get to large impact value and become large and profitable
Darwinbox is one of these companies.”Darwinbox’s Chennamaneni said the startup will use the fresh capital to expand its footprints in
Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian markets
Darwinbox will also expand its product offerings to address more of employees’ needs
The startup is also looking to make its platform enable tasks such as booking of flights and hotels.Chennamaneni, an alum of Google and
McKinsey, said Darwinbox aims to double the number of clients it has in the next six to nine months.
