Salesforce.com Inc., the human resources software developer, is making the first investment in an Indian company known as Darwinbox. The US’ giant venture is already serving Asia’s largest tech start-ups, but it is embarking on its first investment with Darwinbox (cloud start-up).
Headquartered in Hyderabad, India, the start-up has raised USD 35 million from firms including Lightspeed India, Sequoia Capital, and many others. The financing round conducted by Salesforce for Darwinbox was USD 15 million; it is the first in India and the only investment in Asia outside of Japan.
The Darwinbox customer list includes the world’s largest brands and Asian start-ups, including Puma, Nivea, Zilingo, and Indonesian online mall Tokopedia. The core services of Darwinbox include developing touchless attendance systems and providing onboarding and employee engagement systems to several customers (approximately 500) across 60 countries.
Since the last fundraising in 2019, the start-up has grown 300%. The co-founder Jayant Paleti said, “Adoption of cloud-based services by enterprises was double the global average before the pandemic.” The former investment banker cofounded the start-up in 2015 by teaming with a colleague, a childhood friend, and a former McKinsey consultant. “Since the pandemic, we are seeing a shift to the cloud within a few quarters that would have otherwise taken three or four years,” he added.
