Hrtech Startup Mesh Eyes Expansion After Raising $11 Mn Funding Led By RTP Global

Performance management startup Mesh has secured $11 Mn in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm RTP Global. The round also saw participation from YC Continuity, Sequoia’s Surge and a few other angel investors including Viral Bajaria, Ankit Nagori, Sumon Sadhu and Hemant Bhardwaj.

The startup plans to utilise the newly raised capital to focus on building a global team for further expansion in the U.S. and APAC markets. Mesh is planning to increase its headcount by 100 by the end of this year.

Gaurav Chaubey, Rahul Singh and Saurabh Nangia founded Mesh in May 2020 as a social network inspired SaaS platform. This U.S.-headquartered, remote-first hrtech startup has grown to a team of almost 50 employees spread across four countries since its inception.

Mesh’s performance management platform is built with the goal to make it easy for employees to manage goals, share feedback, and run one-on-ones. It even sends users personalised reminders to drive individual growth. 

Mesh claims to manage a wide pool of soon-to-be unicorns and unicorns across sectors, including the likes of ShareChat, CRED and Groww, among others.

Talking about the startup initiating its journey during the pandemic, when hrtech’s growth dipped, and witnessing a 16x revenue growth since 2021, Mesh’s cofounder and CEO Nangia said that they could identify the trend of the remote work model and leverage that opportunity to grow. 

“We could see the writing on the wall in the summer of 2020 that soon enough individuals will start getting disengaged with the company and people will start looking out for different solutions that will start jumping ship. The year 2021 played out in our favour when the Great Resignation was out there and all the leaders could see that employees are getting disengaged,” said Nangia in an interaction with Inc42.

Following this, the leaders started acting on how they impact employees and work on recognition aspects, which led to more investments in performance management solutions. 

“We happen to be at the right place at the right time,” added Nangia.

In July last year, the startup had raised $5 Mn in funding led by Surge, with participation from co-investors RTP Global, Y Combinator Continuity and Emles Venture Partners. Mesh was a part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 companies.

Equipped with a multi-layered tech stack, Mesh has already gained prominence across industries in Southeast Asia and the U.S. with clients such as Kitabisa, Qoala, CleverTap, Pipefy.

“Our vision is to enable 30 Mn people to achieve their full potential at work by 2030,” said Gaurav Chaubey, cofounder and CRO at Mesh.

Like many other market segments, hrtech had witnessed a negative impact across regions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, according to a report, the global hrtech market is projected to grow to $35.68 Bn in 2028 from $24.04 Bn in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8% in the forecast period. 

Last month IndiaMART invested INR 17 Cr in SaaS-based human resource startup, Zimyo.

HRtech startup Darwinbox raised $72 Mn in a funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) in January, entering the unicorn club.