PagarBook raises $8 mn in latest tranche of Series A round

Bengaluru-based Gyankaar Technologies, which runs employee management platform PagarBook, has raised $8 million in the latest tranche of the Series A funding round, led by Sequoia Capital India, with participation from India Quotient. 

The company raised $7 million in an earlier tranche in October, taking the total funds raised in the Series A round to $15 million. 

The fresh funds, it said, will be used to drive product development and customer acquisition efforts.

The company has so far raised a total of $17.65 million across multiple rounds, as per VCCEdge data. Prior to the Series A round, it received seed capital from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and India Quotient.  

Read: PagarBook among 12 Indian startups in Sequoia Surge 04

Founded in December 2019 by Adarsh Kumar, Arya Adarsha Gautam and Rupesh Mishra, PagarBook looks to solve employee management issues for MSMEs, and offer the blue and grey collar workforce a professional footprint to receive formal employee benefits, such as a pay hikes and access to the formal banking system and financial products.

As most organisations with a headcount of 20-50 tend to maintain manual records, PagarBook’s easy-to-use workforce management app will help the SMEs easily maintain and manage attendance records, speed up payment cycles, reduce disputes, eliminate human errors in wage calculation and advance payments. 

For instance, employers could use the app, which is available in 11 Indian languages, to access day-specific and employee-specific payment logs and generate salary slips and invoices at the touch of a button. 

So far, Kumar told TechCircle, the platform has roped in over 1.2 million employers, who manage an employee base of more than 3.5 million. The company also offers a desktop version of the platform.

The startup onboarded 400 employers within two days of its launch, Kumar said, adding that the company has grown more than 100x in terms of employers over the past six months. The app has more than 5 million downloads on Google Play. 

By the end of 2021, he said, the company eyes a 4x-5x growth and looks to manage about 10% of India’s SMEs, which make up about 30% of the country’s GDP with a workforce of over 400 million.

During the year, PagarBook also plans to add financial products, such as payments and credit for MSMEs and their employees, the statement said. It is also exploring various new capabilities for the platform, including facial recognition and fingerprint-based authentication, as well as solutions for complete payout and compliance automation, Kumar said.

“We’re going deep into the employers’ problems and building the platform so that employees can interact meaningfully with the system,” he said.