Sequoia leads Series A funding in staff management startup PagarBook

By Debjyoti Roy

  • 18 Dec 2020
Credit: 123RF.com

Employee management platform PagarBook has raised $15 million (Rs 110 crore) in its Series A round of funding led by existing investor Sequoia Capital.

Another early backer India Quotient also participated in this round, the startup said in a statement.

PagarBook, operated by Gyankaar Technologies Pvt. Ltd, said it will use the capital for product development and customer acquisition. The company also plans to add financial products such as payments and credit for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and their employees on the platform over the coming year.

The startup helps SMEs save time on managing and maintaining attendance records, speeding up payment cycles, calculating wages and other aspects of human resource management through a workforce management app. 

Rupesh Kumar Mishra, co-founder at PagarBook, claimed the startup manages around 2% of India’s SME workforce. It aims to increase this figure to 10% by the end of 2021, he said.

PagarBook was founded in December 2019 by Mishra, Arya Adarsha Gautam and Adarsh Kumar, who previously co-founded GyanApp, a knowledge-sharing platform for non-English speaking Internet users.

PagarBook claims to have over 5 million SMEs and 15 million employees across 3,000 locations registered on the platform. The app is available in 11 Indian languages.

Sequoia, via its startup accelerator Surge, had previously invested Rs 15.2 crore in PagarBook.

PagarBook is among a growing number of startups operating in the broader human resources and performance management segment in the country.

In November, Leena AI, a human resources technology startup raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Greycroft Partners.

In October, Zimyo Consulting Pvt. Ltd, which operates an eponymous human resources-technology startup, raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round.

Earlier this year, homegrown private equity firm WestBridge Capital led a $30 million round of investment in US-based human resources technology company Phenom People Inc.

In August last year, Talview Inc. raised $6.75 million in a Series A round of funding from Storm Ventures, Inventus Capital, Eileses Capital and Emergent Ventures.