Sequoia-backed HRTech unicorn, DarwinBox has received investments from Microsoft as a strategic investor. However, the financial details of the investment were not disclosed. The Hyderabad-based firm will be the first HRTech SaaS-based platform from Asia with whom Microsoft will also collaborate and see integration between Darwinbox and Microsoft’s product ecosystem, and co-innovation on solutions to enhance employee experience.
As part of the collaboration, Darwinbox will adopt Microsoft Azure for its human capital management SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform. Its SaaS platform caters to HR needs across the entire employee lifecycle with employee experiences and artificial intelligence-powered technology, according to a report.
Co-founded by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti, and Rohit Chennamaneni in 2015, Darwinbox covers recruitment, payroll, employee engagement, talent management, and people analytics across the employee life cycle. It claims to be the third-largest SaaS-based HRTech firm after SAP and Oracle. The company’s endeavour is to empower its customers to engage more meaningfully with their colleagues across levels, and take more informed decisions.
The startup believes in crediting every valid point no matter how young the source may be. It values consistent high performance and expects everyone to be the best version of themselves. The platform also claims to have serviced over 2 million employees across 700 plus organizations and 90 countries.
Commenting on the latest development, Co-founder of DarwinBox, Jayant Paletti, said:
We have a customer base of close to 750 and almost 80-85 percent of these customers are already using Microsoft ecosystem. This integration will further elevate that. This will also further add muscle to our global expansion plans. DarwinBox has a large customer base in India, and in South East Asia has presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia.
Darwinbox’s mobile-first platform will have deep integrations with Microsoft’s platforms such as LinkedIn, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 platforms like Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva; and Azure Active Directory. It has leveraged Microsoft’s Power BI to further augment its AI-based predictive analytics engine, to build visual analytics dashboards, helping employees across customer organisations use data more effectively and power faster business decisions.
The firm’s last quarter forayed into the US markets and before that into the Middle East geography. The partnership also includes a go-to-market strategy as well, which Paleti said will be useful in the new geographies that the company has forayed recently into.
Director, Startup Ecosystem Microsoft, Sangeeta Bavi, added:
For Microsoft this will be the first such partnership in the HRMS space in Asia, wherein we are custom integration of DarwinBox offerings on top of Microsoft products. This will be unique for DarwinBox. And it is very interesting to see such a product platform coming from India.
In January 2022, the company had raised $72 million in Series D round led by Technology Crossover Ventures with participation from existing investors including Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed India, Endiya Partners, JGDEV, 3One4Capital, and SCB 10x to enter the unicorn club.
Salesforce Ventures and Sequoia Capital are among its backers, and its customers include HDFC Bank, Aviva Singlife and Tokopedia, the report further stated.
Adding further about the collaboration, President of Microsoft India, Anant Maheshwari, said:
Across the country, organizations big and small are making possible new ways of doing business and we are pleased to work closely with leaders like Darwinbox, who are completely reimagining the frontiers of employee experience with the power of technology. Our collaboration with Darwinbox builds on our focus of co-innovating with our customers to empower organizations across India to do more with less.
According to VCCircle, the company expanded to countries like Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. It counts Southeast Asia and India as the highest contributors towards its revenue and it also opened new offices in West Asia, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the US. Darwinbox also plans on expanding its business in the abovementioned regions in 2023, and its partnership with Microsoft is expected to fuel its expansion plans.
Earlier this month, Darwinbox had raised around $4.9 raised $5 million as part of its extended Series D round from State Bank of India (SBI).
