Microsoft Invests In DarwinBox; To Collaborate, Integrate Product Ecosystem

Sequoia-backed HR tech unicorn DarwinBox has received investments from Microsoft as a strategic investor. The financial details of the investment were not disclosed.

DarwinBox will be the first HR tech SaaS-based platform from Asia with whom Microsoft will also collaborate and see integration between Darwinbox and Microsoft’s product ecosystem, and co-innovation on solutions to enhance employee experience.

Darwinbox's mobile-first platform will have deep integrations with Microsoft’s platforms such as LinkedIn, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 platforms like 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 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 South East 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- 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 2 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

Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said, “Across the country, organizations big and small are making possible new ways of doing business and we are pleased to work closely with leaders like Darwinbox, who are completely reimagining the frontiers of employee experience with the power of technology. Our collaboration with Darwinbox builds on our focus of co-innovating with our customers to empower organizations across India to do more with less.”