Sequoia Capital invests in HR tech startup, Darwinbox

Sequoia Capital India recently led a $15-million round in Darwinbox, an HR tech startup based in Hyderabad. In this series B round, the Company’s current investors, that is, Lightspeed India Partners, Endiya Partners and 3one4 Capital also participated. The funds will be used to improve product and technology, hire talent across functions, and develop the business in South East Asia. The series A round that had taken place in two years ago, had seen an investment of $4-million.

Launched by three former consultants in 2015, Darwinbox is a unique HR platform that is integrated with the finance and customer management functions. It provides its clients access to advanced analytics and detailed information pertaining to the employees, their expenses and also the workflow in the organisation. The startup is currently catering to about 200 enterprise clients—including Arvind, Adani, Mahindra, Kotak, GVK group companies, Bharti AXA, Swiggy, Paytm, and Times Internet—with the Asia market being its prime focus. It has offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Singapore and Indonesia.

According to the founders, Darwinbox helps tackle the challenges of the HR function in large and diverse organisations by offering interactive interfaces. Its recruitment module enables ranking of the best applications from amongst thousands and also schedules interviews. It measures the performance of employees throughout the year. It even offers a unique module for succession planning.

The founders of Darwinbox, Jayant Paleti, Rohit Chennamaneni and Chaitanya Peddi plan to invest more on making the platform stronger, involving artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), with special focus on its analytical layer, to enhance its decision-making capabilities.