Salesforce.com Inc. is giving rise to its first investment in an Indian company which is an inventor of human resources software that attends to several of Asia’s largest tech startups. Darwinbox figures some of the world’s largest brands and Asian startups among its customers like Puma, Nivea, Indonesian online mall Tokopedia, and Singapore’s Zilingo.
The U.S. venture arm is directing a $15 million financing round for Darwinbox. It’s the only investment in Asia outside of Japan. It is headquartered in Hyderabad which is a startup that already raised $35 million from backers including Lightspeed India, Sequoia Capital, and 3one4 Capital among others.
It develops touchless attendance systems and employs more than a million employees of 500 customers across 60 countries. The startup last raised funds in 2019 and has grown 300%.
The co-founder Jayant Paleti said that “Adoption of cloud-based services by enterprises was double the global average before the pandemic,” Paleti said in a phone interview. The former investment banker co-founded the startup in 2015 along with a colleague and a childhood friend, 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,”.
