PagarBook raises $ 15 mn in funding from Sequoia Capital, India Quotient

The funds from the Series A round, which also saw participation from India Quotient, will be used in further product development and to drive customer acquisition, a statement said.

New Delhi: Staff management solutions provider PagarBook on Thursday said it has raised USD 15 million (about Rs 110 crore) in funding led by Sequoia Capital.

The funds from the Series A round, which also saw participation from India Quotient, will be used in further product development and to drive customer acquisition, a statement said.

The company also plans to add financial products such as payments and credit for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and their employees on the platform over the coming year, it added.

Previously, PagarBook had raised a seed round from India Quotient and Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program Surge.

Released in December 2019, PagarBook’s platform helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs) save time on managing and maintaining attendance records, speeding up payment cycles, reducing disputes, eliminating human errors in wage calculation, payment of salaries and various other aspects of human resource management through an easy-to-use workforce management app.

PagarBook, which was founded by Adarsh Kumar, Arya Adarsha Gautam, and Rupesh Kumar Mishra, currently has over 5 million SMEs registered on the platform. The app is available in 11 Indian languages. In the past seven months, the app has gone from a few thousand to more than 5 million downloads on the Play Store.

“India’s 60 million SMEs and its 400 million large workforce contribute roughly 30 per cent of India’s GDP, but still lack a verified financial and professional footprint in any organised technology ecosystem. As a result, they are left out of the mainstream financial ecosystem,” Rupesh Kumar Mishra, co-founder of PagarBook, said.

PagarBook addresses this massive gap with its digital human capital platform for SMEs.
“We are currently managing around 2 per cent of India’s SME workforce and by the end of calendar year 2021, we aim to grow 5x and take this figure to 10 per cent,” Mishra said.

Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia India said in the last six months, PagarBook has grown over 100x and now tracks attendance and processes payroll for millions of Indians.