Microsoft invests in HR tech unicorn Darwinbox

HR tech unicorn Darwinbox has received investments from Microsoft as a strategic investor though financial details of the investment were not disclosed.

The HR tech SaaS-based platform from Asia is collaborating with Microsoft to ensure integration between Darwinbox and Microsoft’s product ecosystem, and co-innovation on solutions to enhance employee experience.

DarwinBox's solution will integrate with various Microsoft platforms, including LinkedIn, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva), and Azure Active Directory.

Darwinbox has leveraged Microsoft's Power BI to further augment its AI-based predictive analytics engine, to build visual analytics dashboards, helping employees across customer organisations use data more effectively and power faster business decisions.

Jayant Paletti, cofounder Darwinbox in its blog said: “We have a customer base of close to 750 and almost 80-85 per cent of these customers are already using Microsoft ecosystem. This integration will further elevate that. This will also further add muscle to our global expansion plans.” 

Darwinbox has a large customer base in India, and in Southeast Asia has presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia.

Darwinbox, last quarter forayed into the US markets and before that into the Middle East geography. The partnership also includes a go-to-market strategy as well, which Paleti said will be useful in the new geographies that the company has forayed recently into.

“For Microsoft this will be the first such partnership in the HRMS space in Asia, wherein we are custom integration of Darwinbox offerings on top of Microsoft products. This will be unique for Darwinbox. And it is very interesting to see such a product platform coming from India,” said Sangeeta Bavi, Director of Startup Ecosystem Microsoft.

This is also one of the focused partnerships that Microsoft is creating with product-led startups in India, where they create deeper partnerships.

With this collaboration Paletti is also sure that getting to the $100 million annual run rate (ARR) should be possible in the next 2 years. Darwinbox offering cover over two million employees from more than 700 enterprises across 90 countries.

Some of these brands include Nivea, Starbucks, Dominos, T-Systems, AXA, Tokio, Cigna, JSW, Adani, Vedanta, Mahindra, Kotak, NSE, Ujjivan, Makemytrip, Swiggy and Tokopedia.