HRtech Startup Darwinbox Enters Unicorn Club With $72 Mn Funding

HRtech startup Darwinbox has raised $72 Mn in a funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). With this capital infusion, the startup’s valuation crossed the $1 Bn mark, making it the third Indian unicorn minted in 2022.

Existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, 3One4Capital, JGDEV and SCB 10X also participated in the round. 

Around the same time last year, Darwinbox had raised $15 Mn in funding led by Salesforce Ventures to expand globally. It had raised another $15 Mn from Sequoia Capital in 2019 and $4 Mn in a Series A round in 2017. To date, it has raised a total of $110 Mn in venture capital.

Darwinbox plans to deploy the freshly infused funds towards fueling its global expansion, product development, and hiring talent across multiple teams. 

Founded in 2015 by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni, Darwinbox is a cloud-based HRtech startup that caters to companies’ HR needs across recruitment, onboarding, core transactions (leaves, attendance, directory), payroll, travel and people analytics among others.

“We get most excited investing behind visionary founders that are fundamentally transforming large industries with a highly resonant product. I am 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,” said Gopi Vaddi, general partner, TCV. 

Some of the startups in TCV’s portfolio include Netflix, Facebook, Expedia, Spotify, Airbnb, GoDaddy and Gitlab. According to TCV, a total of 79 startups in its portfolio have had an initial public offering (IPO).

The global HRtech market was valued at $22.89 Bn in 2020. It is projected to grow from $24.04 Bn in 2021 to $35.68 Bn in 2028 at a CAGR of 5.8% during the period. 

According to estimations, India accounts for $3.6 Bn of that market in 2021. 

“We have been building a product that puts employees squarely at the center and crafting meaningful experiences for them. This has especially found resonance in this rapidly evolving world of work over the last two years with companies having to rethink how they attract, manage and retain their talent,” shared Jayant Paleti, cofounder, Darwinbox.

Last year, employee management startup SalaryBox had raised $4 Mn in seed funding from Y-Combinator, AME Cloud Ventures, Soma Capital, 2AM Ventures, and angel investors including Gokul Rajaram (Doordash), Sriram Krishnan (Tinder and Spotify), and Anand Chandrasekaran (Facebook).

Blue-collar workforce management startup Smartstaff too had raised $4.3 Mn in a seed funding round in October last year where Blume Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Arkam Ventures, and Gemba Capital participated.