Darren Shimkus and Dennis Yang, founders of Modal, intend to use the capital to improve the platform and its features. Hiring is also on the cards along with the expansion of capabilities.

While Shimkus was formerly president of Udemy, Yang was the CEO. Udemy allows any employee from any organisation to learn skills of their choice using video content.

As a learning platform, Modal aims to provide employees with the skills required to work better and be more productive. The learning is imparted via courses, real-world exercises, one-on-one coaching sessions, simulated projects, labs, and so on, allowing learners to learn alongside industry experts. The platform offers real-time support and self-paced learning.

Modal just recently launched Organizational Development Plans [ODP], designed to help companies connect their goals to specific skills their teams need. This program is meant to drive company objectives, such as improving the business impact of their data work or accelerating the overall transformation of their organization to be more data-driven.

In India, many upskilling platforms are operational including, upGrad, Unacademy, Coursera,Simplilearn, EduGorilla and edX among others.

The post Udemy founders’ skill-development startup, Modal raises funds worth $25M appeared first on HR Katha.

This funding is part of a rights issue of Rs 48 crore, thanks to the financial support from ARAPL. A significant part of the fund will be used to improve its tech infrastructure and working capital. The firm is also looking at hiring deployment engineers and people for its sales team.

The company has entered into sale agreements worth $3 million, and is working to add more to its client base as part of its aggressive expansion.

Having opened a new tech-development office in Gurugram, it has also appointed an experienced chief technology officer (CTO) who has been associated with the autonomous vehicles space and possesses knowledge of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Together, the CTO and a tech team comprising 30 members will develop cutting-edge solutions to help the company grow in the autonomous vehicles and robotic solutions space.

Arapl RaaS intends to foray into the defence space too.

In June 2023, the company had revealed plans to establish a presence in Australia in FY24, with the possibility of exploring the Middle East and Europe.

The post ARAPL infuses Rs 38 crore into Arapl RaaS appeared first on HR Katha.

uExcelerate, founded in 2019, offers a suite of software and services designed to accelerate leadership development within organisations. The platform caters to leaders at all levels and allows companies to create and deliver personalised leadership programs with measurable outcomes.

Upekkha, often likened to Y Combinator for its focus on Indian SaaS companies, is backing uExcelerate’s vision of leveraging AI to transform leadership development. Shekar Nair, managing partner, Upekkha, believes that GenAI will reshape enterprise workflows, blurring the lines between services and software. This, he argues, will lead to a more dynamic AI-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, streamlining functions like HR and learning and development (L&D).

“Forward-thinking startups such as uExcelerate are at the forefront of realising this future,” said Nair, highlighting uExcelerate’s potential in the evolving HRtech landscape.

Amit Kumar, founder & CEO, uExcelerate, emphasised the company’s commitment to nurturing leaders across all levels. With a robust platform and a network of over 250 certified coaches globally, uExcelerate aims to leverage Upekkha’s investment and expertise to further integrate generative AI for a more effective and intuitive leadership development experience.

The post uExcelerate secures seed funding for AI-powered leadership development appeared first on HR Katha.

Workex specialises in sourcing, recruiting, and comprehensive employee management, particularly for blue and grey-collar workforces. The combined expertise of both companies is expected to unlock synergies and deliver greater value to customers. Workex’s offerings will complement Brittman’s existing portfolio, providing a holistic range of HR solutions.

This collaboration signifies a focus on forward-thinking solutions, operational excellence, and a client-centric approach. The combined entity looks to reshape paradigms in the outsourcing and staffing landscape, with a focus on worker identity, dignity, and upliftment.

Commenting on the acquisition, Niren Panchal, managing director, Brittman, emphasised the business potential unlocked by this partnership. He highlighted the focus on workforce optimisation and maximising untapped potential within businesses.

“The real triumph is the business potential it presents. Prioritising worker identity and dignity ensures businesses can tap into their workforce’s potential,” he says.

Nimish Sharma, CEO, Workex, sees the partnership as a gateway to new opportunities: “Our collaboration isn’t just about revolutionising workforce management; it’s a gateway to new business opportunities. Together, we empower businesses with cutting-edge technology.”

This strategic partnership strengthens both companies’ market positions and showcases their commitment to merging industry experience with technological expertise to shape the future of collaboration in the HR solutions space.

The post Brittman acquires stake in Workex; strengthens position in HR solutions market appeared first on HR Katha.

CIEL’s strategic focus on HRTech platforms and professional staffing acquisitions is paying dividends. The company’s annualised revenue run-rate now sits at Rs 1,200 crore, 2.5 times the industry average. This Q3 also saw CIEL raise Rs 16 crore through a private placement, fuelling further inorganic growth plans.

The strategic move towards an IPO includes pre-IPO funding of around Rs 150 crore, with Rs 120 crore allocated for acquiring three companies.

K Pandiarajan, executive chairman, CIEL Group, highlighted the financial achievements, stating, “The financials of Q3 FY24 is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of CIEL Group.” The company has successfully raised over Rs 16 crore through a private placement round, paving the way for a successful IPO in 2024.

CIEL’s focus on strategic acquisitions in HRTech platforms and professional staffing has propelled its growth, with the group’s contribution from HRTech and Consulting increasing to 41 per cent of the overall portfolio, compared to 9 per cent a year ago.

Commenting on the performance, Pandiarajan says, “The financials are a testament to our resilience and adaptability. Acquisitions such as Aargee Staffing and Jombay’s 64 per cent growth highlight our success. These achievements, combined with pre-IPO funding, set the stage for a successful offering in 2024.”

Aditya Mishra, MD and CEO of CIEL HR, commented on the positive outlook, saying, “The successful completion of a private placement round during the quarter has strengthened our company’s inorganic growth plans. Additionally, our pre-IPO fund-raise efforts pave the way for our further growth as we move towards our IPO.”

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The startup is also looking at enhancing its security features to be able to cater to its growing customer base in the manufacturing space, comprising more women.

The MoveInSync platform offers fleet, operations and technology support to help organisations fulfil their employees’ transportation needs in a cost-effective manner.

The platform also runs MoveInSync Ion, which revolves around a Software as a Service (SaaS) operational model, to help current fleets make use of the commute platform.

MoveInSync—which was co-founded by Deepesh Agarwal, who is the CEO presently—hopes to expand the business into foreign markets, including South Africa, Philippines and the Middle East.

The platform was launched in 2009 by Agarwal and Akash Maheshwari, who are both alumni of IIT BHU with the objective of offering a range of employee- commute solutions to firms across various sectors, including information technology.

In the financial year 2023, MoveInSync has reported revenues to the tune of Rs 500 crore. It reportedly hopes to achieve revenues of Rs 1,500 to Rs 1,800 crore by 2027.

Into its fourteenth year of service now, MoveInSync is keen to go for an IPO over the next three years.

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The company is also releasing Redrob Online Skill Tests amidst its endeavour to expand its  online testing platform with ‘Redrob Global People Search’. The platform will use artificial intelligence to reorganise global people data into a more universally understandable format to facilitate sales, networking and hiring.

According to Felix Kim, CEO and co-founder, Redrob, the company “ will break down country-specific silos of contextual knowledge, and in doing so we’ll revolutionise the way people meet online.”

Redrob’s online skill tests help firms design and deploy skill assessments to candidates who apply for jobs in about 30 seconds. This allows prediction of on-the-job performance without any human bias.

Jinyoung Park, senior associate, Murex Partners hopes that “Redrob will be able to connect Indian talent to companies around the world,” considering the way the Indian economy is performing.

Han Joon Lee, senior vice president, DS & Partners drew attention to the fact that “ “South Korean and US companies are increasingly looking to hire Indian talent but do not know where to start. We hope Redrob will be able to solve this problem of information asymmetry.”

The post Global recruitment firm raises $4M in seed round appeared first on HR Katha.

This learning platform aims to fuel its global expansion plan, primarily in the US, and drive product development with this funding. The company’s goal is to integrate Generative AI throughout the learning and skilling cycle. By leveraging Generative AI and cognitive sciences, the company intends to provide personalised content creation, content discovery, and skills intelligence.

Disprz will utilise the funds to expand its global team, hiring data scientists, skill scientists, and software engineers to shape the future of people advancement and people intelligence, including further investments in Generative AI capabilities.

The company also plans to accelerate its success in the markets it operates in through larger and localised go-to-market teams, building brand awareness in the new era of skill-based talent management.

In addition to market expansion and product development, Disprz aims to form strategic partnerships and make targeted acquisitions. The company intends to collaborate with the broader learning and people-tech ecosystem, including HCM players, people reward platforms, learning content providers, assessment companies, and global HR consulting firms.

It is important to observe how Disprz progresses with this investment. Notable competitors in this segment include Skillsoft, Pluralsight, Cornerstone OnDemand, Degreed, LinkedIn Learning, etc.

In 2020, the corporate learning and skilling market in India was estimated to be valued at around Rs 1600 crore, and it was projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 14 per cent from 2020 to 2025. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital learning platforms and online upskilling, further driving the industry’s growth. Digital transformation, government initiatives, and changing work dynamics have contributed to this growth.

The post Disprz raises Rs 240 Crore in Series C funding appeared first on HR Katha.

The organisation’s sixth and final go at launching a satellite was in Britain in January, where the rocket failed to reach orbit and sent US and UK intelligence satellites straight into the Atlantic Ocean. Ever since this incident, the company has failed to attract long term investments.

On March 15, 2023, the company announced its intention to take an ‘operational pause’. This resulted in the company furloughing almost all of its employees to conserve cash and shift its focus on funding to key in on rocket design improvements.

The company was in talks with Texas based investor Mathew Brown who was reportedly ready to make a USD 200 million investment in the firm before the talks got derailed. Between November and March the company was able to secure USD 50 million from Branson’s Virgin Group via debt secured against equipment and other assets in case of bankruptcy. When the company went public in 2021 it raised USD 225 million less than expected.

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The funds will be used to enhance Prismforce’s product suite, strengthen go-to-market capabilities and grow its talent base. The Company is operational in the US and India with live deployments at some of the fastest growing digital specialists and top IT providers.

In addition to Sequoia Capital India, there were other global angel investors who participated in the funding round. A year ago, Prismforce had raised $1.8 Mn in seed funding from select industry thought leaders, serial entrepreneurs and SaaS founders as angels. This brings the total funds raised to date to $15.4 million.

Globally, IT providers have been finding it difficult to attract, engage and retain good tech talent. The surge in the demand for a variety of skills due to digitisation of enterprises has only added to the challenges. To manage this complexity, a digital first approach is required, which is offered by Prismforce’s suite of purpose-built software products.

Prismforce’s software suite for skill management, talent marketplace and forecasting helps technology businesses efficiently plan, staff and deliver projects, while providing compelling career progression for their employees. This leads to sustainable, profitable growth for enterprises and better employee engagement.

According to Somnath Chatterjee, founder & CEO, Prismforce, “Our products combine best practice processes and technology into one powerful, scalable solution for helping companies create a digital and agile talent supply chain. We are using the latest AI technologies to build compelling use cases contextualised to the industry needs”.

The core team at Prismforce has people with experience in global tech and consulting companies such as Amazon, Uber, Infosys, Phenom and McKinsey.

The partnership with Sequoia Capital India will enable the Company to accelerate its product development and business growth to serve the tech sector globally.

Abhishek Mohan, principal, Sequoia Capital India, revealed that “the technology services industry, with a cumulative market cap of over $4 trillion and a global workforce of over 20 million, is a core pillar of the global digital economy”.

The post Prismforce raises $13.6 million in Series A round appeared first on HR Katha.

The Company which has been bootstrapping till now was launched by Vijay Yalamanchili in 2016. It claims to be generating the payrolls of more than 1.5 million employees of its 5,500 odd clients, every month.

An enthused Yalamanchili says in an official blog, “This is not just about securing funding; it is also a validation of our ideas and approach in a world where many funded businesses are struggling to survive.”

Yalamanchili believes the Company has secured funding at the most apt time. Keka is said to have declined several investment offers in the past.

“R&D will be a primary area of our focus as we expand our engineering, product, and customer success teams,” he adds.

Rishit Desai, principal, WestBridge Capital, says in the official communique, “In a short period of time, Keka has emerged as India’s most trusted and innovative HR Tech platform.

Keka entered the market in 2016, and it claims that within a year, it acquired 100 customers. In 2018, the company revamped the product based on the learnings from the initial success.

Despite being bootstrapped all this while, we managed to thrive in the market, thanks to our employees and customers,” said Vijay Yalamanchili, CEO of Keka.

The post Keka raises series A funding of $57 mn appeared first on HR Katha.

Founded by Shyam Sundar Nagarajan and Srivatsan Padmanabhan in 2017, GoFloaters provides workplaces on demand to remote workers, solopreneurs, startups and freelancers. The GoFloaters app is available on Android and iOS. It provides flexible, multi-location access to users by partnering with shared office spaces, meeting venues and even cafes.

With a strong presence in most Tier-1 cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR it is trying to expand its presence in Tier-II cities as well as Tier-III.

The Chennai-based company is looking at expanding into at least 60 more cities by December 2022, including locations in the North East and Central India.

The aim of the Company is to offer plug-and-play workplaces to employees in their hometowns. The funds will be used to expand and enhance the platform’s hybrid workplace solution, WorqFlexi that helps employees to work in collaboration, in person, irrespective of their location.

It relies on various tie-ups with co-working spaces ? already about 80 in Chennai and 94 in Bengaluru.

GoFloaters may be looking at pre-series funding in about six months’ time.

The post GoFloaters raises seed fund from Loyal VC appeared first on HR Katha.

The platform will also receive mentorship from industry experts such as Principal Secretary Industries and Commerce, IT – Telangana Government Jayesh Ranjan, BVR Mohan Reddy, founder and CEO, CYIENT; Taj Haslani, founder, ApTask; Leela Kaza, founder and CEO, Accolite; and N Maran, CEO, KaarTech for its global go-to-market strategies.

“When it comes to recruitment automation, we do not focus on what has been done by others so far; rather we focus on redefining what’s possible. The team at TurboHire works every day to create the future and this round is a testament to the investors’ belief that TurboHire is on its way to build and lead the recruitment automation software category, globally,” says Deepak Agrawal, co-founder & CEO, TurboHire.

As per the firm, this round of funding will help them to springboard its growth and expansion plans. The Company will aim to maintain its compound monthly growth rate (CMGR) graph at 20 per cent, and also grow its international presence to 25 per cent of its total revenue.

“TurboHire has proven that it is a fast-growing company in the automation sector. With this round, they are well on their way to building the category of recruitment automation, while catering to global markets,” says Hemant Joshi, co-founder and managing partner, Pentathlon VC.

This is T-Fund’s fifth investment and MSR, CEO, T-Fund is quite excited about investing in TurboHire. “Their diverse leadership team driving a novel product in the industry through their persistent quest for innovation will be a game changer in the coming years, and we wish them the best,” adds MSR.

The post TurboHire raises $2 mn in pre-series A round appeared first on HR Katha.

The startup, based in Chicago and Pune, will use the funds to hire quality talent and also develop its offerings and create more dynamic pricing solutions and artificial intelligence (AI) and analytical tools for vacation homes and other properties in the short-term rental industry.

Summit Partners, the global alternative investment firm has invested in the Company, which was founded by Richie Khandelwal, Anurag Verma and Sana Hassan in 2014.

With listings running into millions in the short-term rental space, especially Airbnb and Vrbo, the future for alternative accommodations seems to be rather bright. More people seem to be going for alternative / short-term rental accommodations, which will result in the growth of the sector.

PriceLabs offers simple and conveniently customisable solutions that ensures owners of vacation homes receive a return on investment without delay.

The affordable solutions offered by PriceLabs easily integrate with the software being used by vacation rentals, irrespective of the size and location of the property.

Using the platform’s data-driven model, along with customisations and automation rules, owners of vacation rentals are able to manage the pricing and stay restrictions such that they are able to increase revenues and efficiency.

More than 1,50,000 listings across 100 countries are already benefiting from PriceLabs’ solutions.

The post PriceLabs gets $30 mn funding, to expand team appeared first on HR Katha.

The two year old startup founded by Ankit Maggu and Sahil Miglani hopes to make a million students ready for employment in the next five years.

The fresh capital will be used to expand the team, as well as the portfolio of offerings. New programmes will be offered and more scalable learning and hiring platforms will be built.

Geekster, the upskilling platform, focuses on developing programming skills in students and makes them employable in the tech space. What makes Geekster unique is that the students do not have to pay any fee till they bag a good job with a good salary. That is why, the platform is able to attract a lot of students from tier 2 and 3 cities across India.

Ankur Mittal, co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures said, “Geekster has been successful in designing a tech education platform with its unique model of skilling, which allows tech graduates to hone their skills at zero cost until they get a paying job. And at the same time, it engages industry professionals as educators on the platform, keeping the content relevant and practical”.

Ankit Maggu, co-founder, Geekster confirmed, “We are on a mission to democratise quality education and career opportunities; aiming to make a million graduates work ready in next few years”.

With a positive response from students as well as employer partners, along with the support received from the investors, the brand is likely to scale operations in the near future,.

Geekster is already lending support to over 300 companies, including MNCs, startups and top product-based firms, and helping them hire the right tech talent. It has been able to achieve 10x growth in the last eight months.

The post Geekster raises $1.30 mn in funding, will expand team & portfolio appeared first on HR Katha.

Till date, the San Francisco-based Rippling has raised about $700 million in funds.

It was only in October 2021 that the Company was valued at $6.5 billion. About six months since then, its value now stands over 70 per cent higher, at $11.25 billion.

The startup automates employee management systems, including payroll, benefits and accessibility to apps.

With plans to launch about seven new products in the next 12 months, the Company’s annual revenue exceeds $100 million.

Founded in 2016, by Parker Conrad, the Company has the backing of Initialized Capital and Founders Fund among other investors.

Rippling’s software not only automates various employee-related processes and systems, but also facilitates the management and updation of various software tools and apps used by the employees. Simply put, it handles all administrative work which can otherwise prove to be cumbersome for the HR, and take up valuable time and energy.

It is reported that half of Rippling’s revenue is invested in research and development, which is rather high for a SaaS company of this level.

Earlier this year, Rippling, announced its partnership with Carta, the platform for equity management. This collaboration will allow Rippling users to view real-time salary and equity compensation on the same platform.

The post Rippling raises $250 mn in Series D funding round appeared first on HR Katha.

HONO has raised another $1 million from other investors such as Hemant Sultania, Amit Khanna from Amaya Ventures, and Harsh Gupta from Udayat Group.

Strategically, HONO is looking to leverage the fresh corpus of funds to expand its operations across India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, increasing its market footprint and strengthening its product offering.

Chaudhary says, “We expect HONO’s growth curve to show a much steeper rise hereon. Besides, we value the strong and constructive relationship with HONO, developed over years of association with them as a client. We believe in working with brands that are committed to revolutionising the industry. And HONO’s vision, its client centricity and its high-end solutions show that promise,” shares Chaudhry.

Chaudhry will also join the Board of Directors of the company and will be actively involved in guiding business operations.

“Having Aakash Chaudhry and our new group of investors in the fold, makes the HONO journey even more exciting. Their presence and this strategic investment not only establishes our investors’ faith in the business, but also reinstates our belief and the belief of the market in the direction HONO is evolving”, says Mukul Jain, founder & CEO, HONO, on this new development.

The post HONO raises $5 million in Series A funding round appeared first on HR Katha.

With this round of funding, the total funding of WizeHire amounts to $37.5 million and its valuation has gone up to $250 million.

In February 2021, the user-friendly hiring solution that caters to small businesses, closed a $7.5 million Series A funding round with investments from Amplo and Mercury. Other investors included Ruchit Shah and Sandeep Jain.

The platform helps hiring managers align company values, behavioural competencies, technical skills and industry needs to spot the most suitable candidates. Therefore, its clients are able to ensure maximum productivity, decrease turnover cost and increase customer loyalty.

As per studies, the biggest challenge for small and medium businesses is to find qualified talent. Since these businesses cannot really afford staffing firms or effectively use applicant tracking systems that require HR expertise, and prefer not to get involved with time-consuming job boards, they are able to benefit from a platform such as WizeHire.

Started in 2014, WizeHire gives small businesses a rich hiring experience, which is available only to big corporates. It offers small businesses an applicant tracking system, advice from experts and coaches as well as job ad templates and personality assessments that help them identify and hire the most suitable candidates.

The post WizeHire bags $30 mn in funds appeared first on HR Katha.

The Company will use this fresh capital to scale up the business, expand its agency network and industry verticals beyond IT and BPO, into consumer tech, BFSI and retail. It also plans to invest in technology platforms to ensure a better user experience for its clients and integrate various services, including offline video interviews, assessments, BGV and so on, to create a complete ecosystem.

The integrated SaaS platform allows its client base of over 150 organisations to hire and manage their hybrid workforce, by facilitating recruitment via its 200+ strong agency and 25,000+ strong professional networks. FlexC also offers monitoring support to track the performance of the hybrid employees. Managers can track real-time productivity through an interactive dashboard and download performance reports.

With the “future of human capital being all about hybrid workplaces and hybrid workforces”, Siddharth Raisurana, founder and managing director, FyneHand (and former COO of ABC Consultants), said that “FyneHand’s vision of ‘All Things Human Capital’ and FlexC’s vision of a platform for ‘People-Skill-Solutions”, together “create great synergy and partnership to approach the market addressing the future of human capital, which includes permanent and gig workforce”.

Girish Kukreja, founder and CEO, of FlexC, sees this “as an important milestone in FlexC’s journey to become India’s best talent marketplace”. According to him, “this partnership brings in great domain expertise, complimentary offerings to take our platform to large corporates and expand our offerings into new verticals”.

The post Fynehand invests over $1 mn in AI talent marketplace, FlexC appeared first on HR Katha.

The platform plans to use this investment to further enhance deep technology and build strong analytics for on-gig performance. As a result, the hiring process will be improved and “giger” (as Gigforce refers to gig workers) satisfaction will be ensured as there will be productive engagement for “gigers”.

Chirag Mittal, co-founder and CEO, Gigforce, reveals how the expansion of their team size by more than 2.5x “reflects our growth trajectory to grow bigger and better”.

With “stalwarts from industry continuously joining our leadership team across various functions”, the Company aims to achieve 50,000 active “gigers” by the end of 2022. In about three years, Gigforce hopes to achieve over a million active “gigers”.

Mridu Jhangiani from Meraki Labs is confident that the “gig economy will solve India’s burgeoning unemployment crisis in a way that caters to the aspirations and overall wellbeing of gigers”.

Gigforce will “leverage technology to create a strong ecosystem to ensure that the benefits are equitably distributed and at scale,” said Jhangiani.

The gig-tech startup operates a platform that enables gigers to sign up digitally on its user-friendly Gigforce app interface. This helps “gigers” with their documentation, selection of gigs and payments for their services.

Gigforce is also trying to bring benefits such as insurance, quick training, doctors-on-call, and micro credit on its app. It is hoped that this seamless full-stack approach will improve the experience of earning as compared to other typical job-search platforms.

The proprietary payment processing tech built for processing high-velocity payments is especially designed for the gig ecosystem. The platform can process daily payments to gig workers with complete transparency, speed and ease.

Anirudh Syal, co-founder and CPO, Gigforce, reveals that within ten years, “India will have more than 90 million gig workers working through tech platforms”.

This huge opportunity cannot be served by force-fitting conventional job-tech stack. Only a specially designed gig-tech stack, such as Gigforce, can “create a better experience than any permanent conventional jobs,” says Syal.

Based out of Gurugram, Gigforce was launched by Mittal and Syal in 2020.

The post Gigforce, the staffing platform, raises $2 million in funds appeared first on HR Katha.

The SaaS platform plans to use this investment to expand to more geographies, upgrade its technology and strengthen the quality of its talent pool.

Prasad Rajappan, MD & CEO, ZingHR, reveals, “We have clocked phenomenal growth in the past few months, and this funding will further bolster our efforts to expand our footprints across the globe”.

The startup has been leading tech-driven transformation in the HR domain, helping organisations align their automation transitions with desired business outcomes, while enhancing employee experience.

This HRTech venture has over 400 employees, more than 600 customers, and over two million active users. Its solutions help end-to-end processes in HR through artificial intelligence (AI), as well as machine and deep learning algorithms, which help improve employee performance and drive efficient processes covering, recruitment, leaves, attendance, payroll and claim management.

Helping organisations go beyond automation, it helps them come up with solutions that directly impact business outcomes – Outcomation?.

Akhil Awasthi, managing partner, Tata Capital Growth Fund believes, “adoption of SaaS-based processes will decide future winners as businesses go digital.”

The ‘Outcomation’ approach focuses on tangible business outcomes than merely automation of people processes. ZingHR, which was established in 2014, serves hundreds of enterprises with a million employee records offering vertical specific solutions for BFSI, retail, services, IT-ITES, staffing, pharma and healthcare, and manufacturing. It offers complete solutions in HR using artificial intelligence, machine and deep learning algorithms. Apart from India, the cloud-tech HR firm has a strong presence in the Middle East, South East Asia and Australia, and will soon expand to Europe, Africa and the US.

The post ZingHR gets $10 mn in funds from Tata Capital Growth Fund II appeared first on HR Katha.

Other investors who participated in this round included Shihab Muhammed, ex-co-founder, Freshservice (Freshdesk), Navas Meeran, chairman, Eastern Condiments, M. I. Sahadulla – chairman & managing director, KIMS, Rajesh Nair, associate partner EY and K. Paul Thomas, founder – ESAF Group of Social Enterprises.

The Company is gladdened by the fact that four of its own customers, including ESAF and Hedge Equities turned investors in this round, which, according to Zappyhire, “reassures our belief in Zappyhire’s potential in the recruitment automation domain.”

Zappyhire is keen to hire for various positions and accelerate its growth across Asia and North America.

Jyothis KS and Deepu Xavier, co-founders, Zappyhire, reveal that their mission is “to revolutionise talent acquisition for business through our SaaS platform”.

They plan to use the funds acquired to “catapult our plan to grow as a global leader in recruitment automation providers”, for which they are looking to hire “smart minds” capable of fueling their “next phase of growth”.

Zappyhire, which can be called a ‘Siri-for-recruiter’, suggests the right recommendations for recruitment activities basis the historical data of the organisation.

The platform auto pre-screens and ranks candidates from hundreds of applications using semantic resume parser and AI-enabled video interview. It eliminates human effort on candidate engagement processes, such as scheduling/rescheduling interviews of assessment, as well as post-offer engagement to reduce the offer-drop-out ratio using conversation AI.

Its list of esteemed clients includes ESAF Bank, Carestack, Surveysparrow, Jiffy.ai and BukuKas among others.

The post Zappyhire raises Rs 3.71 Cr. in seed funding appeared first on HR Katha.

The Delaware-based employee-engagement and benefits platform, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), raised $3.3 million from Jetty Ventures, Earlsfield Capital, SMC Advisors and other investors. In addition, in the latest round t managed to raise $1.7 M from Y Combinator, Broom Ventures, Kunal Shah and others.

With this fresh infusion of capital, Advantage Club will expand its operations across the world and enhance its offerings of tech-led products and features.

It will continue to invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning to make its product offerings more efficient. offerings.

The Company that has a 70-strong workforce right now, is hiring across locations and planning to expand the team strength to 170.

It has operations in over 60 countries including India, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, the US and the UAE. It is on the lookout for people in sales, marketing and technology.

Sourabh Deorah, CEO and co-founder, Advantage Club, reveals that the Company is working to “bolster its presence internationally” and “hire the right talent to manage all operations globally.”

According to him, the Company aims “to evolve as a single global platform for employee engagement and financial wellness in the SEA and MENA market.”

Smiti Deorah, co-founder and COO, points out that they have observed that “the value of digitisation has increased significantly. With ‘work from home becoming’ increasingly normal, cross-border collaboration within companies has increased and requirement of employee engagement has become truly global.”

Therefore, Advantage Club will “continue solving this problem by building global products catering to HR teams across the world, driving higher retention and productivity.”

It already boasts of over 370 clients across 60+ countries, including Concentrix, Teleperformance, Hexaware, EY, Target and more.

The post Advantage Club bags $5 mn in funds, will expand team by 100 appeared first on HR Katha.

The platform — that helps businesses recruit and manage their blue-collar workforce through the digitisation of their employee-management processes — aims to make technology accessible to 100 million blue-collar workers in India, so that they can find meaningful employment. This is the right time to improve the platform further, as more industrial workers are in possession of smartphones today. The use of technology amongst the workers has definitely been on the rise, which augurs well for them as well as employers who require their services.

Smartstaff plans to use the fresh capital to enhance its mobile-based staffing solution and expand the team. In a year’s time, Smartstaff hopes to have more than 10,000 workers on its platform. It already boasts of big names in its client list, including Raymonds, Enamor and Dixcy.

Generally, the management of blue-collar workers is done by most employers in the old-fashioned way by maintaining registers, excel sheets or via contractors and middle-men. Such processes are not only inefficient but also lead to loss of productivity and result in attrition. Absenteeism is also a major issue, along with miscalculation of pay or remuneration. There is also the risk of middlemen depriving the workers of full pay and provident fund. Smartstaff takes care of all these challenges through its product, which helps track man hours of work efficiently.

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The audio-based conversational-learning platform wishes to engage users through high quality focused 20-minute conversations across diverse topics. These conversations are recorded with features such as highlight, 40-second snippets and curated content recommendation.

Mentza’s team comes with 80 years of experience in tech, design, cognitive sciences, research and marketing.

“Our mission is to get every growth-minded person to engage in at least one Mentza conversation every day, thus making learning effortless, continuous and social. IPV’s investor community has CXOs who understand the need for continuous learning in today’s challenging growth environments. Thus, making them the ideal strategic partners in our vision,” says Anurag Vaish, founder, Mentza.

The team of Mentza has built an audio learning platform with unique features such as live highlighter, audio portfolios and creators’ studio. It recently announced creator partnerships with Rolling Stones and Harper Collins and is in talks with MICA faculty and students to engage them on the platform.

Mentza’s model of delivering curated content in 20 minute capsules is a powerful idea, which allows people to learn and participate while multi-tasking. It aims to build an audio focused conversational learning platform in a community setting, led by a team of strong second-time founders with diverse backgrounds and strengths. “Many funds we spoke with as part of our due diligence also showed keen interest in this space. While B2C is the immediate focus, Mentza is separately also working on a focused B2B strategy going after the large untapped Enterprise Podcast space,” shares Ankur Mittal, co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures.

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The upskilling ed-tech platform helps learners master new skills and upgrade their existing ones. The advanced e-learning platform, with embedded IDE for online coding practice, has an annual customer renewal rate at 78 per cent.

In the next five years, India’s IT industry is expected to be valued at US$300 billion. IT will become necessary to upgrade or revamp skills every four to five years in order to keep up with the ever-changing technologies. While new wave technology requires Cloud/ DevOps, AI/ ML, Fullstack Development/Cyber-security, no many engineering graduates can code to the industry standard. byteXL will help fill the gap by updating students with the evolving technologies and thereby meeting the demands of the IT labour market.

Over 42,000 students from over 55 colleges are active on the platform with an engagement rate of over 75 per cent. The startup has already partnered with Fortinet NSE, Leading India AI, Skysthelimit.org, and GoDaddy Academy for its curricula and certifications. Over 6,000 students have already been successfully placed in the IT sector through byteXL training.

Karun Tadepalli, CEO & co-Founder, byteXL says that the Company aims to “create an ecosystem which will help streamline the online education sector in India.”

Given that a majority of engineering graduates (93 per cent) are not really employable or future ready, and the fact that about 16 million engineers will be required in India in the next one decade, this investment could not have been better timed.

The platform aims “to increase the employability quotient of the country by enabling IT career readiness in students from day one of their graduation,” adds Tadepalli.

With assistance and guidance from industry experts graduates will be able to join their first job equipped with relevant skills and training, which will also accelerate their onboarding process.

Joseph Joy, president, Joy Family Investments, is confident that “the technical ability and contribution by byteXL will help the platform bridge the gaps in the current ed-tech ecosystem with its inventive approach to make e-learning possible.”

Sricharan Tadepalli, COO & co-Founder, byteXL reiterates that, considering that “the majority of the employees will require a significant amount of reskilling and upskilling to evolve in today’s job market, this current funding will assist to propel our growth to the newer geographies and segments.”

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The platform has grown 125 times over the past 15 months and is currently conducting 18 million interviews a month. The Company is looking to use the funds to strengthen its presence in the 28 cities that it is currently operating in and also expand across the country by the end of 2021, helping the Indian economy grow in the process.

Nirmit Parikh, founder and CEO, apna, reiterates apna’s “deep social purpose” and “commitment to the discovery and creation of opportunities to enhance a billion livelihoods, across geographies.” Parikh is confident that with continued support from its partners, apna will “accelerate our journey of ‘solving for the world’.”

Many big names, including Zomato, Bharti AXA, Urban Company, BYJU’S, PhonePe, Burger King, Delhivery, Teamlease and G4S Global rely on apna for their urgent and critical hiring needs. In less than two years, the apna app has facilitated about 100 million interviews.

The team will now focus more on its edtech platform for skilling and invest in hiring exceptional talent and building world-class engineering and product capabilities. The app plans to venture into new markets, including the US, South East Asia, the Middle East & Africa, next year.

‘Made in India, for the world’, apna seeks to offer sustainable solutions to issues pertaining to unemployment, poverty and upskilling. apna’s job platform matches candidates with employers on the basis of their skills, experience and preferences. The app also comprises over 70 communities for skilled professionals, including carpenters, painters, telecallers, field sales agents, delivery personnel and others. apna communities have enabled users to grow their professional networks, upskill through peer learning and find gig opportunities. Its communities enabled 17 million peer-to-peer professional conversations in the past one month.

Founded in 2019, apna.co has partnered with organisations such as the National Skill Development Corporation, UNICEF Yuwaah, Truecaller, Akzonobel, and the Ministry of Minority Affairs of India, in their endeavour to provide better skilling and job opportunities to candidates.

Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital India, Maverick Ventures and GSV Ventures were the other participants in this Series C round.

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The one-year old platform, which focuses on corporate health insurance, helps companies improve the wellbeing of their workforces, by offering health insurance in addition to various wellness, daily fitness, as well as mental-health counselling programmes.

It had, not long ago, raised a million dollars in a Seed round led by Multiply Ventures, Better Capital and Bhavin Turakhia-led Titan Capital.

This fresh capital will be used to expand the Bengaluru-based insurtech startup’s teams, across sales, customer success, engineering and product management. The aim is to expand the wellness offerings on the platform.

With the pandemic forcing people to give more importance to health and physical fitness, the timing is just right for Nova Benefits to expand.

The platform, co-founded by Saransh Garg, CEO and Yash Gupta, CTO, grew more than ten times in a short span of a year, seeing a surge in the number of clients following the pandemic.

The employee wellness industry is growing fast in India, with technology helping accelerate its growth.

In just over a year, Nova Benefits, which boasts of more than one lakh users, has managed to onboard more than 150 clients, including companies, such as Dream 11, CoinDCX, Snapdeal, Zenoti and Yulu Bikes.

Having received a direct insurance-broking license from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), the Company is able to offer organisations the best combination of insurers and coverages.

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Other investors who participated in the funding round included, Commerce Ventures, along with Jason Gardner, CEO, Marqeta; Omri Dahan, CRO , Marqeta; Vlad Tenev, founder, Robinhood; Mitch Dauerman and BobManne, executives, UltimateSoftware; and Matt Straz, founder, Namely. With this round of funding, the Company has managed to gather a total of $14.6 million, including $1.6 million in a seed round last year.

Unlike the conventional third-party tools used by companies, Zeal’s application programming interface (API) allows customers to build their own payroll products, and even manage to make payments to workers on a daily basis. It has modernised the process of payroll and bears the payroll liability, even while handling the payment logistics at the back end.

Zeal’s offering is equipped to handle huge databases of workers and allows firms to keep their large workforces’ payment data on their own native systems. It can help process big volumes of payroll automatically. It also helps companies, especially the small and medium-sized ones to comply with income-tax payments.

Given that the US has about 200 million employees and more than $8 trillion of payroll processing takes place every year in the country, the scope for Zeal, which has been co-founded by Pranab Krishnan and Kirti Shenoy, to grow is immense.

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In the last two years, the startup has grown ten times, successfully connecting suitable remote-workers to the employers who need their services. Wishup focuses on redefining work culture and task management in the country. It is now looking at expanding its available categories by providing remote workers in the fields of marketing, admin, operations and bookkeeping. It will soon be engaging more talent, not just across India, but across the world in varioius categories and verticals.

The time is just right for expansion with the pandemic leading to a growth in the community of remote workers. The demand for remote work and remote workers is already surging, and Wishup is working towards equipping itself to fulfil that demand. Given the huge talent base in India and other developing countries in the world, it should not be difficult for Wishup to build a strong supply network.

Customers are able to hire virtual assistants via Wishup, who are not only trained and efficient, but end up proving to be cost-effective.

The growing community of gig workers in India comprises a significant number of women who are happy to take up part-time jobs or work on projects from the comfort of their homes, as it offers them flexible schedules, along with a good income and the freedom to choose the project they like.

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As part of its expansion, the Company is looking to hire talent for leadership positions, in over 50 countries, including India, Southeast Asia, the UK, the Middle East, and Latin America. In the US, it is already adding 70 people to its team.

This fresh infusion of capital will help its growth and expansion plans to take shape. Some of the funding will also be invested in research and development in hyper-automation. A year ago, yellow.ai had raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Lighspeed Venture Partners.

The Company, which has a 500-strong global workforce, aims to become the global leader in the customer experience automation space.

Founded in 2016, this cloud-based enterprise solutions company, based in Bengaluru and San Francisco, allows organisations to automate customer support, engagement, conversational commerce and other outreach functions using chatbots and voice-led bots.

Co-founded by Raghu Ravinutala, Rashid Khan and Jaya Kishore G, yellow.ai already has a strong client base, including brands such as Domino’s, MG Motor and Sephora.

Its AI-driven bots provide automated customer experience via 35 chat and voice channels, in more than 100 languages, dealing in more than a billion interactions in each quarter.

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The healthtech startup plans to use the funds to enhance its healthcare platform and offerings.

Presently, the Company caters to 1,300 small and medium-sized firms, but aims to reach 10,000 in a year’s time, benefitting over 500,000 people.

The platform offers solutions to the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across India that find it difficult to access affordable health plans. Considering that India is home to about 35 million SMBs, together employing about 150 million people, that is, about 300 people each, this oft-ignored sector is the main target for Onsurity.

The startup is looking at an exit average revenue run rate of about $20 million in the next one year. The platform allows organisations to buy flexible, affordable and customised health benefit plans for their workforces. No wonder the platform has several retailers, food and beverage outlets, small consultancies, trading agencies, l service centres, and even boutique marketing as clients. Many of those employed in these SMBs have never benefited from health plans ever. Onsurity’s offerings will put an end to the struggles of SMBs who find it difficult to zero in on the right health plan for their employees.

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The startup offers an integrated leadership success platform for fast-growing organisations to enhance employee engagement and enable continuous leadership development via personalised coaching at scale, with measurable business outcomes.

Founded by Yasharth Mishra, Gaurav Bhawnani and Kunal Mishra, SuperBeings is founded on deep analytics and proven organisational science and offers proactive and real-time recommendations on employee engagement and leadership gaps. It is designed to be a one-stop-shop for team insights, collaboration, and leadership development via its integrated platform offering engagement analytics, OKR management suite, and a leadership coaching marketplace.

Its analytics product, which won the best start-up award at the HR Showcase 2020 conducted by NHRDN, is presently being successfully used by fast-growing organisations in both India and the US, including Chargebee and Eka Software.

The funds will be used to expand its product extension and scale its business in India and globally.

Yasharth Mishra, co-founder, and CEO, SuperBeings, points out that “even though siloed solutions exist for employee experience and leadership development, we believe an integrated platform bringing together data and intelligence from multiple sources to form a closed loop is the only way to deliver the real outcomes organizations expect from these initiatives.”

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Presently, Hyreo has 25 members and caters to over 40 clients in India, as well as the US and South Asia.

The four-year old Company, was co-founded by Arun Satyan, Mahesh Raju and Sreenath N with an aim to simplify the recruitment process and improve candidate experience with the use of artificial intelligence.

The company offers a customised candidate relationship management (CRM) tool with deep conversational AI capabilities, to enterprises and large customers across technology, IT, banking and financial services sectors. It helps transform the recruitment process into a highly engaging experience for candidates and recruiting teams. The customers are assured of enhanced employer brand, consistent candidate experience, improved offer conversion, lower cost and ace quality hires.

Arun Satyan, co-founder & CEO, Hyreo, is confident that with this round of investment, the Company is ready for the next stage of growth and that “It is time for Hyreo to start looking at larger international markets, including the US and other APAC regions. With the conclusion of this funding round and onboarding marquee investors, we are setting out to achieve our Hyreo 2.0 vision in the next few months.”

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In addition to various angel investors, the funding round saw participation from Golden Gate Ventures, MS&AD Ventures and Picus Capital.

The platform — founded by Amritpal Singh, Sagar Khatri and Vamsi Krishna — shortens the conventional hiring process of talent from other countries, which otherwise would take several months, down to minutes. And the best part is that all compliance-related issues are taken care of without incurring too much cost. Therefore, organisations from anywhere in the world can access talent from anywhere, especially quality talent from Asian countries. Providing a legal employment infrastructure in more than than a 100 countries, the platform automates payroll, payments, compliance and HR workflow.

Sagar Khatri, co-founder, Multiplier, believes “talent is everywhere, and our vision is to enable companies to hire the best person for the job, regardless of their location. We have grown exponentially since the launch, which is testament to the demand from companies—both large and small—for a simplified, international employment solution.”

The startup will use the fresh capital to increase its presence in the region and add more features to the platform. By transitioning to the Multiplier platform, businesses are able to scale across the APAC region and access a wider talent pool, while saving time and costs.

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With this infusion of capital, Luminous will double its capacity to produce batteries and inverters and upscale its solar business. As a result, it will increase its battery and inverter production capacity, generate new employment opportunities and ramp up its solar business. In doing so, it will end up giving indirect support to about 10,000 people and families.

The current capacity of Luminous to produce 3.12 million batteries a year, will be pushed up to 5.1 million in five years. That means, its capacity will go up by 63 per cent. Luminous intends to set up a new plant to produce tall-tubular batteries (TTB). The plant will be established in two phases, the first phase will witness a manufacturing capacity of 30,000 TTBs, and the capacity will increase to 65,000 in the second phase. Of the fresh funding, about Rs 185 crore will be spent on technological upgradation for the manufacture of advanced batteries and inverters.

The Company has already created a name in rooftop solar solutions for residential and commercial buildings. With the fresh capital, it will work on delivering better customer experience via high-quality products, easy installation, and excellent services.

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With this funding, the Bangalore-based startup will work on advancing its technology, acquire talent and also expand to the US and Southeast Asia. The 16-month old app caters to workers who are not comfortable with the English language and belong to the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Since its launch, it has grown almost 50 times in the last one year, owing to demand in the e-commerce and healthcare space. It has presence in at least 14 cities, and is available in six regional languages other than English.

Founded by Nirmit Parikh, who is also the CEO, Apna app has been touted as the LinkedIn for the non-English speaking job seekers. To generate a business card, users have to simply enter their name, age and skills. The card is then sent out to potential employers.

Apna connects about 10 million job seekers, including carpenters, sales personnel, salon workers, painters and delivery boys, to over 100,000 employers. The employers it caters to include names such as Amazon and Burger King. to Amazon.com Inc.

Interestingly, the app offers small courses that train users to speak English or prepare for job interviews. It offers training in about 4,000 skills, many of which are taught by partners or developed in-house.

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With over 2.2 million members worldwide, the Company offers mental health solutions for employees and family members at leading multinationals, such as Uber, Genentech (part of the Roche Group), eBay and VCA Animal Hospitals.

The Company’s innovative Blended Care Therapy combines video counselling, one-to-one messaging, and various digital activities to lend support to employees through their daily lives. It has already helped about 83 per cent of the participants recover from depression or experience relief from anxiety. This kind of high rate of improvement is not seen when traditional health plans are used. Based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy principles, this immersive treatment model interspersed with ongoing support sessions helps individuals improve faster. Lyra’s network comprises over 5,000 coaches, therapists, and doctors in the US, with an additional 85,000 providers globally, through global tie-ups.

The behavioural health benefits platform recently partnered with ICAS World. Till date, Lyra has raised a total of $680 million in funding and is valued at $4.2 billion.

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Launched in January last year, by an entrepreneurial couple with over 12 years of experience in the training business, LearnVern offers job-oriented courses in vernacular languages. Right now, it has more than 5.5 lakh students registered on the platform taking over 37 different courses in software development, IT, graphic design, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, digital marketing, and so on.

The courses are offered in Hindi and Bangla. LearnVern has tied up with AICTE and NSDC Skill India Training Partner to offer the learning courses to make students employable.

Niral Modi, founder & CEO, LearnVern, is glad the funding has come at a time when they are looking to scale and reach out to over four crore students studying in colleges across India.

As he rightly puts it, “We believe today, as platform-based online learning increasingly gains traction, skill-based education in their native language is emerging as the choice for students and employers.”

LearnVern aims to offer a vernacular learning platform, where students can learn for free — at their pace, and in their preferred language. Its new technology enhancements will enable video conferencing, peer-reviews and forums and many other features that will deliver a thoroughly immersive experience.

Furthermore the AI-based tool will ensure students get matched to local and national level employer’s Job requirements. The funding will be used to upgrade the technology with stronger web and mobile platforms, while also creating more courses in different languages to engage more students.”

Learnvern is currently working with 500+ large and medium employers to enable direct recruitment.

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The organisation, which focusses on increasing women’s participation in the STEM workforce, has begun working with over 100 companies to engage, enable and employ women in decision making through its digital platform and virtual products. Through its various industry-government-academic tie-ups, WiT-ACE is trying to ensure policy and education impact in the industry.

“The 100+ clients engaged with over 200k women on the platform, in less than 11 months in one of the toughest years for business, gives us a good grip of industry needs and the confidence to grow this organisation to the next phase of exponential growth.”

Anuranjita Kumar, founder, WiT-ACE

The goal of WiT-ACE is to ensure that at least 50 per cent of decision-making roles are essayed by women. To make this happen, the organisations intends to strengthen the current weak talent pipeline in the industry through focused skilling for women at all stages. The ultimate aim is to check the falling rates of professional women in the workforce and push up the numbers pan India by infusing at least a million skilled women into the workforce over next four to five years.

Anuranjita Kumar, founder, WiT-ACE, feels, “The 100+ clients engaged with over 200k women on the platform, in less than 11 months in one of the toughest years for business, gives us a good grip of industry needs and the confidence to grow this organisation to the next phase of exponential growth.”

Kumar shares that the organisations is “focused on progressive and measurable impact on bridging gender gaps, through skilling and employment that will lead the transformation.” She is confident that with the support from its partners “will be the much-required springboard towards achieving our target of impacting 20million women by 2025.”

Jagdish Moorjani, COO, CitiusTech, is pleased with the progress WiT-ACE has made in such a short span of time. He is impressed with the way “WiT-ACE has multiple tracks parallelly focused on developing women as front runners to lead the organisations of tomorrow.”

CP Gurnani, CEO & MD, Tech Mahindra, has faith in the initiatives led by WiT-ACE, which he feels are “truly inspiring” and he looks forward “to the next phase of their efforts towards enabling a gender-equal and inclusive future.”

Sumita Ambasta, founder and executive director, Flowering Tree Inc. and founder & trustee, Plaksha, points out that that female workforce participation in India has been declining from an already low 35 per cent in 2010 to 20 per cent in 2020. Women make up hardly 1 per cent of the C-suite roles. She rightly says “These facts reveal the immense work and potential ahead of an organisation like WiT-ACE.” Partnering with WiT-ACE will help “catalyse a workplace diversity revolution.”

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This fresh capital will allow the Company to invest further in technology and to expand the market.

Founded by Ashish Ambasta with the sole aim of building the employer-employee relationship to achieve organisational happiness, the six month-old HappyPlus is already providing its services to big names, including Tata Steel LP division, TM International (Logistics), Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL), ABP Network and has even gained entry into the private health insurance sector.

It is now discussing another round of investments with investors, even while it is working to build a strong team of senior professionals with a clear vision to develop and provide tools, techniques and solutions for creating happy habits for individuals in the organisation.

HappyPlus emphasises on the importance of ‘Happiness Habit Development’ through scientifically-designed tracks and ‘One-Touch’ technology solution. Its ‘WOW Life’ solution is a science-backed framework which raises the level of consciousness, connection, and competence at the employee and employer level.

Ambasta reveals that the Company is supported by science and an expert community of psychologists, counsellors and analysts who help address mental wellbeing through qualitative and quantitative research coaching and mentoring programmes. It is probably one of the first human resource technology organisations in India, to introduce the concept of developing happiness within the workforce in a scientific manner.

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With this fresh infusion of capital, Ecom Express will look at sustainable development and enhance skills and create more jobs. the country needs to create 8.1 million jobs a year to maintain its employment rate. The Company’s initial target was 15,000 jobs, with priority being given to women at its fulfilment an delivery centres as well as warehouses across India. In addition to this, it hopes to create 8,000 new jobs in the country.

With the new funding, it will also take up strategic initiatives, and focus on expansion, growth-driven capital expenditure, working capital requirements, new business initiatives, and potential acquisitions and strategic partnerships.

CDC, believes in the important role that Ecom Express is playing in “enabling e-commerce growth and expanding product reach across India.” Therefore, CDC offers its support to the Company’s expansion plans across India. Ecom Express’ business aligns with CDC’s development, impact, and sustainability goals.

Ecom Express hopes to use this capital to strengthen its network, infrastructure, operations and technological capabilities as it moves forward on its journey of growth.

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The recent funding round was led by the investment firm Franklin Templeton. In addition to its existing investors, Andreessen Horowitz and Alkeon Capital Management, this time, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, as well as Fidelity Management & Research LLC and Whale Rock were the new investors.

Founded by the creators of Apache Spark, Databricks has its headquartered in San Francisco, and offices worldwide. The startup has about 5,000 customers, 40 per cent of which are Fortune 500 companies, that utilise its service in data engineering. The software offered by Databricks helps organisations crunch huge amounts of data, process the same fast and prepare it for analysis. It can assist organisations in cleaning data for exploration in data visualisation software, without bothering about any need for configuration or updation.

Using this freshly infused capital, Databricks will be able to expand its “lakehouse” architecture, which obtains data from various sources for better analytics.

Of late, there has been increased interest among investors in cloud-computing startups.

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Darwinbox, the Hyderabad-based startup has already managed to gather funds to the tune of $35 million from investors, such as Lightspeed India, Sequoia Capital and 3one4 Capital. The latest Series C round worth $15 million was led by Salesforce. This is Salesforce’s second investment in Asia after Japan.

Working specifically to create touchless attendance systems, Darwinbox provides hiring, onboarding and several employment-engagement tools to nearly 500 organisations, based in around 60 countries. This cloud-based HR technology platform in a SaaS model, was founded in 2015 by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni. It automates employee lifecycle, taking care of recruitment, onboarding, attendance, expense management, payroll, employee engagement, performance management, as well as people analytics.

The newly acquired funding will be used to create new solutions and advance the startup’s R&D capabilities in deep technology. The Company saw a spike in demand and adoption during the pandemic, with more than 180 remote implementations being completed. Not surpringly, its revenue grew 200 per cent at a time when most organisations were struggling to stay afloat.

Some of the big names that are benefitting from its solutions include BigBasket, Swiggy, Nivea, Puma, TVS, the Adani Group, Bharti AXA, the Mahindra Group, and Dr. Reddy’s.

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The Munich-based startup’s platform covers recruitment, onboarding, payroll, absence tracking and other important HR functions. Since it charges a per employee price, it is affordable for small and mid-sized firms, allowing them the option of paying as their teams grow or expand.

With the fresh funds, the Munich-based startup will be able to take forward its plans to expand further. It already has presence in Austria, Switzerland, Spain, the UK, Ireland, the Nordic countries and Benelux. Now it is gearing to enter France and Italy soon. It will also double its 500-strong global team, by hiring about 500 more employees by the end of the year, in London, Dublin, Munich and Madrid.

In 2020, Personio was able to double its revenues at a time when most companies were reeling under an economic slowdown induced by the pandemic. The Company now caters to about 3,000 organisations.

Other than its current investors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Global Founders Capital, Northzone and Picus, this latest funding round saw participation from Meritech, which is known to support SaaS firms with potential.

The startup is the second one in Germany, after Sennder, the freight company, to be valued at over a billion dollars.

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When the three-year old startup had announced the pre-series A funding in July, it had raised about Rs 7.3 crore in a round led by Incubate Fund India. Other angel investors who have invested in the same are S Ramadorai, ex-CEO, TCS and Kiran Deshpande, former CEO, Tech Mahindra.

Sahil Sharma, co-founder & CEO, GigIndia, revealed the Company’s plan to “rapidly scale the business in the country, while continuing to invest in talent and technology.”

The newly acquired funds will be used to enhance the Company’s technology platform to help create a larger community of gig workers.

While the Company had suffered about 80 per cent loss in business due to the lockdown in March, its revenue was in closed November was the highest till date. Apparently, the number of gig workers from tier 2/3/4 cities is going up rapidly —from 5.22 per cent in March 2020 to 58.11 per cent in September 2020.

There has been a growth of four times in women gig workers in October 2020 as compared to April 2020.

Launched by Sahil Sharma and Aditya Shirole, Gig India helps companies save on the overhead costs of hiring, training and managing workforce. Its technology-driven processes ensure automated end-to-end management to drive desired business outcomes for organisations.

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In India, the Company plans to focus on hiring. It is looking at engineering resources for its offices that will be opened across the country.

The Company will be working in alignment with the commodities and banking regulators in the country to ensure that their “partners remain totally compliant with the changing regulatory landscape”.

The funding has come from many sources, including a couple of Indian angel investors, along with LuneX Ventures, Robot Ventures, CoinShares, Coinbase Ventures, Better Capital, CMT digital, Gumi Cryptos Capital, as well as Robert Leshner, CEO, Compound Finance and Jesus Rodrigues, CEO, IntoTheBlock.

Now, Vauld plans to go beyond being just an India-focused crypto platform to a holistic DEFI platform, covering payments, credit and trading.

Earlier this year too, LuneX Ventures had invested in Vauld. Since then, it has grown ten times, and hopes to keep doing so given the fact that cryptocurrencies are becoming widely popular. This latest round of funding was led by Pantera Capital and will help Vauld become a full crypto bank.

The platform is aiming to make cryptocurrency the most popular and preferred banking instrument by simplifying its use and integrating it with the existing banking infrastructure.

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The capital raised will be used to further develop the product and “drive customer acquisition”. The platform that aims to make the lives of SME owners and employees better every day, will also add financial products, including payments and credit, which will benefit the micro, small and medium enterprises or MSMEs across the country. Its user-friendly workforce management app — available in 11 Indian languages — already helps MSMEs manage and maintain attendance records, accelerate payment cycles, keep conflicts in check, reduce human errors in wage calculation, timely payment of salaries and other facets of human resource management.

Focussing mainly on the unorganised sector, PagarBook is basically a mobile app using which any business owner or employer, with a five to 30-strong workforce, can easily manage salary, attendance and various payments of all the in a smooth and convenient way.

More than five million SMEs are already registered on the platform and the app has been downloaded by over five million users in the past seven months.

PagarBook is managing about two per cent of the Indian SME employees, and hopes to manage 10 per cent in a year’s time.

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In conversation with HR Katha, Chunduru revealed that apart from Hemant Kaul there were 18 more investors participating in the latest round of funding. “The fund has been raised for productising some of the offerings, expanding into new geographies and some key hires,” he shared.

VANS Skilling and Advisory is a platform for interim CXO services, with an eco-system of products and network of B-schools. It has recently closed a pre-series A round, attracting investors, such as Sujan Sinha, ex MD and CEO, Shriram Housing Finance; Sandeep Divakaran, former CEO, OLA Fleet Technologies along with many more CXOs from leading companies and partners from consulting companies.

The boutique firm focuses on helping companies scale. It partners with organisations in their journey and co-owns the outcome through rigour in execution. It has served clients in FMCG, housing finance, chemicals, consumer electrical, manufacturing and new-age internet companies over the last few years. Using its ‘Interim Model’, supported by its state-of-the-art research and knowledge centre in Mumbai, VANS has played a pivotal role as ‘Interim’ (CHRO, CFO, CEO) for its clients.

Kaul was a part of the initial start-up team of UTI Bank (Axis Bank), and was instrumental in setting up its retail banking function. He was the managing director and chief executive officer of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance until 2012. He is presently on the board of OLA Financial Services.

In Kaul’s own words, “Post COVID, we see a huge opportunity across organisations to be agile, cost focused and capabilities centric.” With its unique Interim CXO approach coupled with a complete eco system of indigenously-built products and B schools, the VANS team is able to passionately drive the shift and is “poised to cater to the entire value chain.”

As Srinivas Chunduru rightly points out, Hemant Kaul’s “vast experience in BFSI and Fintech will help VANS’ offerings”, as the team aims to “leverage and scale” its unique model, strong execution muscle and methodologies to grow the platform.”

“Vans future plan is to strengthen its interim CXO offerings, especially CFO, CHRO and COO. Additionally, it hopes to productise some of the unique indigenous methodology, such as institutionalising innovation, coaching and finance for business excellence and objectives and key results (OKRs),” explains Chundru

Additionally, Yugma, an interface for B school students and corporates, was recently launched under VANS, to churn out future-ready talent, enhancing employability of students. In a nutshell, the platformt strengthens the unique eco-system of products, companies and campuses.

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The Company is known for its people management platform that has been able to keep pace with technological advancements of the dynamic workplace of today. Companies have been able to function and operate better with the help of ‘bob’, which believes in engaging.

With the pandemic-induced transformations at the workplace, productivity software are being relooked at everywhere, as the focus has shifted to employee interaction and egagement.

The Series B funding for Hibob is being led by SEEK and Israel Growth Partners. Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Eight Roads Ventures, Arbor Ventures, Presidio Ventures, Entree Capital, Cerca Partners, and Perpetual Partners were also among the participants in the Series A round last year. The Company has managed to gather about $124 million till date.

Specialising in mid-market consumers, Hibob has about 1,000 customers across the US, Asia and Europe including the likes of Fiverr, Monzo, Revolut, VaynerMedia, Gong, ironSource, Receipt Bank and Happy Socks.

The platform handles the management of payroll, compensation and benefits, onboarding, as well as leaves. It allows colleagues, managers and employees at all levels to provide direct feedback to, which ensures that they remain engaged.

Addition of learning and development modules to the platform is also on the cards. The simplified HR platform allows companies to remain updated and aware of all aspects of work. Most importantly, in these times of uncertainty and disruptiions, it facilitates engagement and establishes connections.

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