Hyderabad headquartered Darwinbox enters the unicorn club

Hyderabad: The startup ecosystem in Hyderabad is growing and adding another feather to this cap is a Hyderabad headquartered company that has joined the unicorn club. City-born HR tech platform Darwinbox has raised $72 million (approximately Rs 537 crore) in funding taking the company’s valuation above the $1 billion mark. A unicorn is a privately […]

Hyderabad: The startup ecosystem in Hyderabad is growing and adding another feather to this cap is a Hyderabad headquartered company that has joined the unicorn club. City-born HR tech platform Darwinbox has raised $72 million (approximately Rs 537 crore) in funding taking the company’s valuation above the $1 billion mark. A unicorn is a privately held company valued at over $1 billion.

The current round was led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) – that had backed companies like Netflix, Meta, Spotify and Airbnb — along with participation from existing investors like Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, 3One4Capital, JGDEV and SCB 10X. After this round, the total investment raised by the company so far has gone over $110 million (approximately Rs 820 crore).

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While there have been two other companies – Zenoti and HighRadius — founded in Hyderabad that went on to become a unicorn, Darwinbox is the first startup to have its headquarters here. Other two companies became unicorns after they shifted base to the United States.

The startup was founded by three techies Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni in 2015 and they have worked for large corporates before rolling out Darwinbox. The company operates in the same segment as the Oracles and SAPs of the world operate in and is the only Indian company to give a tough competition to these global giants.

“This investment energizes our mission to continue building technology that enables organizations to unlock the highest potential of their people. We have done this by 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 2 years with companies having to rethink how they attract, manage and retain their talent,” said Paleti.

The new funding will be used for 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 its go-to-market presence in South Asia, SEA, and MENA. The company is expecting the overall team to grow by 100 per cent and is also setting up to launch in the US in 2022.

The company has enabled 650 large enterprises to empower and engage their talent with its mobile-first HR lifecycle platform providing workforce & talent management, employee engagement, compensation and benefits, people analytics, HR service delivery suites amongst other offerings.

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