The Hyderabad-based startup received the money last quarter, the company told ET, without specifying the exact amount.
The funding extends a collaboration between Microsoft and the HR-tech startup to build software tools for employee management at enterprise clients with integrations built in via Microsoft Azure, the company said in a statement.
On whether the current round was an uptick from the last closing, co-founder Jayant Paleti told ET, “Not considerably. This took some time to architect. It was not just investment. We will have product partnerships via many integrations with several product lines within Microsoft, plus like go-to-market… it is more an extension of the last one.”
The relationship with Microsoft will also accelerate joint go-to-market motions in all markets that Darwinbox operates in currently – India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the United States, a market it entered in September 2022.
Darwinbox’s cloud-based platform is used by over 750 enterprises and two million employees across the globe, the company said, adding that it had clocked 2X revenue growth since its Series D unicorn funding round in early 2022.
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Darwinbox had raised $72 million in a funding round led by Netflix backer TCV at a valuation of more than $1 billion in January 2022, making it to the coveted unicorn club, or those privately held startups with a valuation mof $1 billion or more.Operating with 1,100 employees, Darwinbox was founded by Paleti, Rohit Chennamaneni and Chaitanya Peddi in 2015. In 2019, it went on to set up shop in Singapore, and expanded in Southeast Asian markets soon after.
In 2021, Darwinbox went on to become Salesforce Ventures’ first Indian startup investment, and second investment in Asia, with which it gained Salesforce’s support in cultivating marketing abroad. After this round, it expanded to the Middle East.
“Microsoft has the largest enterprise field force in the world. In all the geographies that you are in, in all the geographies that you want to be in, their distribution machinery is amazingly powerful… Every large enterprise, every mid-market enterprise, every government, they are there, so how do you use that muscle and machinery?” Paleti said.
Darwinbox’s clients include the likes of Nivea, Starbucks, Dominos, T-Systems, AXA, Cigna, JSW, Adani, Vedanta, Mahindra, SBI General, Shoppers Stop, Kotak, NSE, Makemytrip and Swiggy.
“Our collaboration with Darwinbox builds on our focus of co-innovating with our customers to empower organizations across India to do more with less,” said Anant Maheshwari, president, Microsoft India.
