Darwinbox, Asia’s fastest growing HR tech platform, today announced another milestone witha US $72 million funding round, leapfroggingthe companyto a billion-plus-valuation. Led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) along with participation from existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, 3One4Capital, JGDEVand SCB10X,the round takes the total investment in the company to over $110 million. The company has grown 200% in revenue since the last fundraise from Salesforces Ventures 12 months ago and has addedmore than700,000 users on the platform in the same period.
Founded in late 2015 by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti, and Rohit Chennamaneni, Darwinbox currently stands as the youngest and the only player with origin in Asia in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCMthat serve 1000+ employee enterprises.It is also rated the highest (4.8) globally on Gartner’s customer reviews platform, Peer Insights, and is racing ahead of global leaders like SAP, Oracle and Workday– a position the company secured on the back of innovative technology, deeper understanding of market context, intuitive user experience, and great customer traction.
The new funding is intended to supercharge Darwinbox’s global expansion plan by allowing the company to accelerate its platform innovation agenda, strengthen its product, engineering and customer success teams along with scaling their go-to-market presence in South Asia, SEA and MENA. The company is expecting its headcount to grow by 100% and is also setting up to launch in the U.S. in 2022.
2021 represented one of the most transformative years in defining the future of work. Organizationsall over the world weretested on their ability to respond to and thrive during times of change. Extraordinary focus on enabling workforces to thrive in an uncertain environment, and keeping them happy and productive, no matter where they were, stood out as a priority for every CXO.
Darwinbox is at the heart and center of this movement, enabling more than 650 large enterprises to empower and engage their talent with its mobile-first hire-to-retire HR lifecycle platform providing Workforce & Talent Management, Employee Engagement, Compensation and Benefits, People Analytics, and HR service delivery suites.More than 1.5 million employees from leading global brands includingNivea, T-Systems, Starbucks, Dominos, AXA, Tokio, Cigna,MakeMyTripandmany othersjoined the Darwinbox platform.
“We get most excited investing behind visionary founders that we believe are fundamentally transforming large industries with a highly resonant product,” said Gopi Vaddi, a General Partner at TCV. “We are delighted to back an outstanding team that is doing exactly that in a highly impactful, fast-evolving HR technology space and partner with them on their journey to global HCM leadership.”
“Investing behind technology to manage talent has become inevitable for organizational success,” added Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, and a Venture Partner at TCV. “Darwinbox’s demonstrated ability to build agile, innovative, and user-friendly solutions along with deep customer centricity has made them a platform of choice for several leading enterprises.”
‘’ We strongly believe in a simple first-principle – people are at the core of every successful enterprise. And technology is the most scalable way for organizations to unlock the true potential of its people,” said Rohit Chennamaneni, co-founder of Darwinbox. We have seen the impact of executing on this belief by allowing our customer-enterprises to truly harness the demographic dividend that a young Asian workforce promises. We’re now ready to take the same first-principle and solution for the world.”
On expandingproduct investments, Chaitanya Peddi, Co-founder and Product Head of Darwinbox shares: “Building for extraordinary agility and delivering stellar employee experience have been critical in defining success for Darwinbox’s customers.We will continue to invest in new and innovative technology to deliver a frictionless experience for the work-from-anywhereworkforce.
In addition, this year, we will be bolstering our platform offering with a host of ancillary servicesand solutions that enterprises can plug and play to composean extensible and integrated HR tech ecosystem.”