Salesforce Ventures leads funding round of $15 mn in tech startup Darwinbox

Darwinbox is a human resources technology platform and its technology powers more than 500 global enterprises with over 1 million employees spread across 60 countries

Salesforce Ventures, the investment arm of customer relationship giant Salesforce, has made one of its first investments in India. It has led a funding round of about $15 million (Rs 109 crore) in Darwinbox, a human resources technology platform.
 

This follows the Hyderabad-based company’s Series B round raised in September 2019 led by Sequoia Capital India with participation from existing investors Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, and 3one4 Capital. The round brings the total investment in the firm to $35 million. The company revenues have grown by over 300 per cent since the last round of funding.
 

“Cloud adoption in Asia is growing at a monumental pace and the pandemic has only further amplified the importance of going digital,” said Alex Kayyal, partner and head of International, Salesforce Ventures. “Darwinbox is delivering innovation for Asia’s leading enterprises and has emerged as a top platform of choice.”
 

Darwinbox’s HR technology powers more than 500 global enterprises with over 1 million employees spread across 60 countries. Founded by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni - Darwinbox’s new-age, hire-to-retire human capital management (HCM) platform helps enterprises empower, engage and elevate the potential of their workforce.
 

A deep understanding of the Asian context, ease of use (with mobile centricity), high level of configurability and faster time-to-value are key reasons why the product has seen immense traction in the enterprise segment. It competes with large tech companies such as  SAP, Oracle and other established vendors.
 

Globally, more enterprises are abandoning legacy offerings in favour of our modern,  agile HCM (human capital management) platform that helps them stay ahead of change” said Jayant Paleti, co-founder of Darwinbox. “We will work with Salesforce closely to maximize value to our customers, continue building out our product stack and accelerate global expansion.”
 

Some of their notable customers range from Asia’s largest conglomerates to fast-growing technology unicorns including Adani, Mahindra and Kotak. The other customers include TVS, Arvind, NSE, Nivea, Puma, Swiggy and Bigbasket. It would use the funds to accelerate digital HR adoption and deepen product offering.
 

“We will leverage the new investment to speed the introduction of exciting new solutions and advance R&D to deploy deep-technology capabilities,” said Chaitanya Peddi, co-founder, Darwinbox.
 

Darwinbox witnessed a massive surge in adoption during the pandemic. Their integrated product suite also came equipped with solutions that turned out to be critical for the new mode of work. This includes features like touchless attendance, digital rewards, employee engagement, digital hiring and onboarding. It did over 180 implementations remotely just during the lockdown and witnessed a record high revenue growth of 200 per cent.
 

Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India said that India is home to one of the world’s youngest population, and by 2050, it is expected to account for over 18 per cent of the global working-age population.

“This makes technology platforms like Darwinbox, that focuses on workforces, incredibly important,” said Bhattacharya.