Incubate Fund India, Beyond Next Ventures back B2B jobs marketplace GigIndia

Pune-based B2B jobs marketplace GigIndia has raised $970,000 (Rs 7.3 crore) in a bridge funding round, dubbed pre Series A round, led by Japanese venture capital firm unit Incubate Fund India.

The round also saw participation from Tokyo-based venture capital firm Beyond Next Ventures, and returning angel investors Subramanian Ramadorai, former CEO of TCS; Kiran Deshpande, former CEO of Tech Mahindra; Ravi Nigam, former managing director and co-founder of Tasty Bite Eatables; and Shashank Deshpande, co-founder of Clarice Technologies. 

Additionally, angel investors Sakshi Gudwani, senior programme officer at the Gates Foundation; and Shantanu Deshpande, CEO of Bombay Shaving Company also infused capital in this round, the company said in a statement.

GigIndia plans to use the fresh funds to improve its technology platform, expand brand presence and build a team, the statement said. As a B2B brand, GigIndia is bullish on the quality and speed of service it can provide its customers, the statement added.

“While empowering large enterprises to scale effectively, GigIndia also provides meaningful employment opportunities to job seekers across India through gigs (micro jobs). To make these gigs more accessible to the job seekers, we will use the current round to invest in our technology platforms, acquire new customers and build a world class team to join us on this mission,” Aditya Shirole, co-founder of GigIndia, said.

Shirole launched the company in 2017 with Sahil Sharma to provide businesses on-demand work completion at scale via gig (variable) workforce in sales, marketing, recruitment, operations and product verticals. The startup, which provides freelance and long term jobs, leverages technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to enable faster turnaround and quality checks. 

“We have over 7,50,000 screened, trained workforce across more than 100 cities in India. With our technology, we are able to train and manage the workforce at scale to drive results for large enterprises. The enterprises only pay for results and not for the workforce deployed,” Sharma said.

Lead Advisory was GigIndia’s sole financial advisor in the latest funding round.

“At Lead Advisory, we strive to work with exceptional founders and companies and hope to facilitate them to execute big ideas. GigIndia was one such company with a vision to change the landscape of work in India in the future, and a team that has effectively been executing this vision. We genuinely believe that Incubate Fund and Beyond Next Ventures are perfect partners for GigIndia in their journey, and would like to wish them well for the same, ” Fenil Zaveri, Investment Banking Associate  at Lead Advisory, said.

GigIndia competes with startups such as Awign, which last raised capital in December 2019, TapChief and Leo Capital-backed women’s networking platform Sheroes.