Darwinbox raises $15 million from Sequoia India, others

Enterprise HR technology platform Darwinbox on Thursday announced raising $15 million ( ₹105 crore) in Series B round, led by Sequoia India. Existing investors Lightspeed India Partners, Endiya Partners and 3one4 Capital also participated in this round.

Darwinbox’s cloud based end-to-end Human Resource Management System (HRMS) caters to HR needs across the entire employee lifecycle, from hire to retire.

The company was founded in 2015 by Chaitanya Peddi, Rohit Chennamaneni and Jayant Paleti. Over 200 plus global enterprises have powered their HR digitalization agenda on Darwinbox. With the new funding, the company plans to accelerate its Asia expansion and product innovation.

“Talent is core to the success of any business. Our mission from day one has been to build a human capital management system, that puts employees squarely at the center and enables orgs to engage, empower & elevate the potential of their workforce. This has made us the HR platform of choice for 200+ leading Asian enterprises,” said Jayant Paleti, co-founder, Darwinbox. “Partnering with marquee investors will accelerate our penetration into the Asian Enterprise market, drive product innovation and maximize value delivered to customers.”

“Darwinbox is the clear emerging leader in the fast growing cloud-based HR management software space in Asia. The Darwinbox team combines world-class product sensibilities with a unique understanding of local nuances in HR in Asia to provide a compelling and delightful product to their customers, a sentiment we heard expressed by several HR leaders. Sequoia India is thrilled to partner with the team to help them expand aggressively in the coming years,” said Harshjit Sethi, principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP.

Recognized as one of the most preferred HCM solution in APAC, according to a Gartner report, Darwinbox has over 200 customers with 500,000+ employees spread across 50 countries worldwide. Their customers range from multi-sectoral conglomerates to technology unicorns and include Arvind, Adani, Mahindra, Kotak, GVK group companies, Bharti AXA, Dr. Reddy’s, Bisleri, Nivea, Swiggy, and Paytm. The company has a dominant presence in sectors such as pharma, healthcare, manufacturing, BFSI, consumer products, technology and retail.

Darwinbox operates in the same space as traditional tech leaders like SAP, Oracle and Workday, but has successfully established itself in the market. The high level of configurability, ease of use (with mobile centricity) and faster time-to-value are some of the key reasons why the product has seen immense traction in the large enterprise segment.

According to the company, since raising its Series A funding in June 2017, the company’s customer base has increased by 5X and revenue metrics have grown by 900%.

“Asia has a unique mix of decades-old conglomerates, new high-growth enterprises, millennial-heavy populations, regional multinationals and diversity of languages and cultures. Enterprise products in Asia need to be consumer-grade in terms of usability, yet highly configurable for all the heterogeneity in use-cases. Darwinbox understands and delivers on this need better than global providers to lead the market in enterprise-grade human capital management solutions,” said Dev Khare, Partner, Lightspeed India Partners.