HR tech platform Darwinbox more than tripled its valuation in a new $72 million funding round, making it a unicorn as the Indian startup spearheads what investors call the “SaaSization of Asia.”
Investor Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), known for backing companies including Netflix, Meta, Spotify and Airbnb, led the Hyderabad-based startup’s $72 million Series D funding round.
Existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital India, Salesforce Ventures, 3One4 Capital, Endiya Partners, and SCB 10X also participated in the round, which brings Darwinbox’s historical fundraising to over $110 million and a valuation of over $110 million. $1 billion. said the six-year-old startup.
Darwinbox operates a cloud-based human resource management platform. The startup’s eponymous platform manages employees’ needs throughout the “hire-to-retire” cycle. Hundreds of companies, including Starbucks, Domino’s, recently turned decacorn Swiggy, Tokopedia, Zilingo and Kotak, use the startup’s platform to handle the onboarding of new employees, understand their performance, attrition and build a Continuous feedback loop.
The new funding comes after a year of strong growth for Darwinbox. In an interview with TechCrunch, co-founder Chaitanya Peddi said the pandemic has accelerated Darwinbox’s growth as companies around the world scramble to find tools to coordinate and serve their employees.
The startup said its revenue doubled last year and tripled in Southeast Asia, accounting for about 20% of its total revenue.
The startup’s full-stack products — including a social network to keep employees connected and an AI assistant that can request time off or schedule meetings with quick voice commands from their phones — helped cement its status as the only Asian Gartner Featured startups in the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Cloud HCM.
The breadth of offerings probably explains why one-third of Darwinbox’s customers today are people who previously used Oracle, SAP, and Workday’s more mature platforms.
Gopi Vaddi, general partner at TCV, said in a statement: “We are most excited about investing in visionary founders who are fundamentally changing large industries with highly resonant products.”
“I’m excited to support an amazing team that has done this in a highly impactful, fast-moving HR technology space, and to partner with them on their journey to global HCM leadership.”
Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said Darwinbox is part of a wave of startups built for the world from Asia. “I’m a big believer in the SaaSization of Asia. I’m seeing an increasing market traction for Asia-facing SaaS companies, which is a sea change from what I observed five years ago,” he said on LinkedIn in 2019. wrote in the post.
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