HR-tech startup Advantage Club on Monday said it has raised $3.3 million (Rs 24.4 crore) from Jetty Ventures, Earlsfield Capital and SMC Advisors, among others.
This is in addition to the $1.7 million the Gurugram-based startup had raised from Y Combinator, Broom Ventures, Kunal Shah founder of Cred and others in August, Advantage Club said in a statement.
Founded in 2014 by Sourabh Deorah (CEO) and Smiti Deorah (COO), Advantage Club is an online employee rewards and recognition platform that seeks to digitise all employee needs under one umbrella. The company, operated by Work Advantage Pvt Ltd, currently serves more than 370 companies across over 60 countries. It is focused on India, Southeast Asia, and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions at present, and estimates the market size to be $13 billion.
Sourabh Deorah said that the company will use the fresh capital to boost its international presence and for hiring to manage its global operations.
It aims to hire across sales, marketing, and technology teams and will be increasing its headcount to 170 from 70. The company also plans to continue investing in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to improve its product offerings.
Smiti Deorah noted that the value of digitisation has increased significantly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
"With work from home becoming increasingly normal, cross border collaboration within companies has increased and the requirement of employee engagement has become truly global. We will continue solving this problem by building global products catering to HR teams across the world, driving higher retention and productivity," added Smiti Deorah.
Startups operating in the broader HR and jobs platform in the country have been attracting venture capital funding.
Earlier this month, Multiplier raised $13.2 million (around Rs 99 crore) as part of its Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital India.
Spottabl, a SaaS-enabled full-stack hiring platform, raised a Rs 3.5 crore (around $450,000) seed funding round from Paradigm Shift VC, Binny Bansal, cofounder of Flipkart, and LetsVenture.
In September, HR-tech startup Leena AI raised $30 million (about Rs 222 crore) in a Series B funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
In the same month, jobs platform Apna became the latest entrant in the growing list of Indian unicorns after raising $100 million (Rs 734.7 crore) as a part of its Series C round led by existing investor Tiger Global Management.