[Funding alert] PagarBook raises $15M in Series A from Sequoia Capital, India Quotient

Staff management solutions provider PagarBook on Thursday said it raised $15 million (about Rs 110 crore) in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. The round also saw participation from India Quotient.

The funds raised will be used in further product development and to drive customer acquisition, a statement said.

The startup also plans to add financial products such as payments and credit for MSMEs and their employees on the platform over the coming year, it added.

Previously, PagarBook had raised a seed round from India Quotient and Sequoia Capital India's rapid scale-up programme Surge.

Launched in December 2019, PagarBook helps SMEs save time on managing and maintaining attendance records, speeding up payment cycles, reducing disputes, eliminating human errors in wage calculation, payment of salaries, and various other aspects of human resource management through an easy-to-use workforce management app.

The startup — which was founded by Adarsh Kumar, Arya Adarsha Gautam, and Rupesh Kumar Mishra — currently has over five million SMEs registered on the platform, and is available in 11 Indian languages. In the past seven months, the app has gone from a few thousand to more than five million downloads on the Google Play Store.

"India's 60 million SMEs and its 400 million large workforces contribute roughly 30 percent of India's GDP, but still lack a verified financial and professional footprint in any organised technology ecosystem. As a result, they are left out of the mainstream financial ecosystem," said Rupesh Kumar Mishra, Co-founder of PagarBook.

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PagarBook addresses this massive gap with its digital human capital platform for SMEs.

"We are currently managing around two percent of India's SME workforce, and by the end of 2021, we aim to grow 5X and take this figure to 10 percent," Mishra said.

Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia India, said, "In the last six months, PagarBook has grown over 100X and now tracks attendance and processes payroll for millions of Indians."