Work Automation Platform Squad Raises $2.1 Mn From Blume, Axilor, Others

Delhi-based Squad (earlier known as SquadRun) has raised $2.1 Mn funding from India and Valley-based investors including Blume Ventures, Contrarian Capital, 91springboard, Emergent Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Anthill Ventures, and Axilor Ventures.

Angel investors Gokul Rajaram (Product Engineering Lead at Square) and Shamik Sharma (Senior Technology Advisor at Myntra) also participated in the funding round.

Squad was founded by Apurv Agrawal along with Kanika Jain and Vikas Gulati in 2014. The platform automates business processes for enterprises by combining human intelligence and AI.

SD Shibulal, co-founder of Infosys and Axilor Ventures said, “We are excited by the disruption Squad is bringing to the outsourcing industry with its distributed workforce model. Their AI-powered digital platform which can manage customer workflows at large scale will help global services companies improve responsiveness and bring down costs.”

The startup will use the newly raised funds to scale its platform by expanding the technology, product, and data teams in India and the sales team in the US.

Squad’s clientele includes Uber, Sephora, Tata Group, Flipkart Group, Rocket Internet Group, Teespring and other data-intensive businesses.

The startup turned profitable last year and opened an office in San Francisco. Apurv Agrawal, co-founder & CEO said, “Over the last one and a half years, we have achieved product-market fit and turned into a profitable SaaS business. However, we wanted to invest ahead of revenue to scale the platform and get strategic investors on board.”

As per a company statement, Squad uses a workflow engine that breaks down business processes in an efficient manner. It manages a proprietary workforce of independent skilled contractors.

Squad helps businesses crowdsource operational problems from mobile workforce (college students, young professionals, housewives, etc.). So far it claims to have connected more than 75,000 people across India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Uganda, and Kenya to meaningful work opportunities through Internet-enabled smart devices.

In February 2015, the startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from a group of investors including Amit Ranjan of Slideshare, Deepinder Goyal, founder of Zomato, Zishaan Hayath, founder of Toppr, and Girish Khera, co­-founder at Scientific Animations. Other startups in this segment include OneSpace, TaskRabbit, Twentify, etc.