HONO, a leading HR tech solutions company, on Wednesday announced it has raised $5 million in a series A funding round led by Aakash Chaudhry, managing director of Aakash+BYJU’s, a test-preparation company.

While Chaudhry invested $4 million in the AI-driven employee experience platform, the remainder $1 million came from other individual investors such as Hemant Sultania, Amit Khanna of Amaya Ventures, and Harsh Gupta of Udayat Group.

With this investment, Chaudhry will join the board of directors of the Gurugram-based company and will be actively involved in guiding its business operations.

HONO aims to use the fresh capital to expand its operations across India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, increasing its market footprint and strengthening its product offering.

“HONO’s emphasis on technology, particularly AI, to address, simplify and humanise end-to-end HR processes being a single source of truth and its ability to transform HR into a productivity driver is something we believe in. We expect HONO’s growth curve to show a much steeper rise hereon,” Chaudhry said.

"We believe in working with brands that are committed to revolutionising the industry. And HONO’s vision, its client centricity and its high-end solutions show that promise," he added.

To Mukul Jain, founder and CEO of HONO, the latest capital infusion is a vote of confidence in the company’s business and its direction.  

“Having Aakash Chaudhry and our new group of investors in the fold, makes the HONO journey even more exciting. Their presence and this strategic investment not only establish our investors’ faith in the business, but also reinstate our belief and the belief of the market in the direction HONO is evolving,” Jain said.

"We have, for years, been advocating that future-readiness of HR or organisation lies in their use of data towards better productivity and happier people. And for that to happen, they need to have a single-source-of-truth backed by truly smart systems. With this new impetus, we will be able to take this further and do it globally, at scale."

With over 300 clients, including air carrier IndiGo, Spencer’s Retail, Kanmo Group, Dainik Bhaskar, Al Fardan Group, NBC Bearings, HDFC Bank, Medicover, Aakash+BYJU’S, and over 1 million employees on its AI-backed platform, HONO has achieved a two-fold growth during FY22.  

The human resource management software provider now intends to scale the business and its sales vertical, as it seeks to double its client count and support 5 million people on its platform in FY23.