Salesforce invests $15m in India's Darwinbox

The round included smaller contributions from existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed India Partners Advisors, and 3one4 Capital. Endiya Partners, the start-up’s first institutional investor, also participated via its recently closed second fund.

“Mid-market enterprises in India are leapfrogging with technology the same way the individual consumers are, going directly to the cloud to manage human capital,” Sateesh Andra, a managing partner at Endiya, told AVCJ. “There are a lot of tailwinds here because when you have a distributed workforce or a work-from-home workforce, you want cloud solutions. We believe this company will do extremely well and be a leader in this space.”

Darwinbox positions itself as an end-to-end HR services provider that caters to enterprises’ needs across the employee lifecycle, including hiring and retirement. It has some 500 enterprise clients in more than 60 countries, including Kotak Mahindra Bank, Times Internet, L&T Metro Rail, Edelweiss Tokio Life, and private equity-backed players such as financial technology provider Paytm and food delivery apps Swiggy and BigBasket.

Revenue has grown 300% since September 2019, according to The Economic Times, ranking Darwinbox as the third-largest HR cloud provider in India. The fresh capital will advance a recent entry into West Asia and an ongoing expansion effort in Southeast Asia. Darwinbox, which also has an office in Singapore, is expected to have an edge versus global competitors in these markets because it has always focused on developing, mobile-first economies.

“The US-based companies operate at the top end of the market and charge a premium for products that in some cases are 20 years old and require massive training sessions before people can use them,” Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed India, told AVCJ following a $15 million Series B last year. “Darwinbox has pricing that makes sense for the region and a modern architecture. It is as easy to use as Facebook.”

Salesforce Ventures is the investment arm of US-based customer relationship management software giant Salesforce. Darwinbox is being touted as the firm’s maiden deal in India, although it did join Microsoft Ventures in 2016 to co-lead a $23 million round for Helpshift, an India-founded customer service platform that has moved much of its business to the US.

Salesforce Ventures’ push across the broader region includes the launch of a Japan fund in 2018 and an Australia fund in 2019.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Expansion
• Support services
• India
• Sequoia Capital
• Lightspeed Venture Partners
• 3one4 Capital
• Endiya Partners
• professional services