Apna, an India-based digital hiring startup, brings USD 100 million in a Series C funding round led by Tiger Global on 16 September 2021. The startup has turned into a unicorn in just 21 months of creating the app and just 15 months after starting full-scale operations.
Investors: Existing Investor Tiger Global Management led the latest funding round. In addition, Owl Ventures, Maverick Ventures and GSV Ventures have also contributed to this round. The startup has managed to increase its valuation to USD 1.1 billion. Existing investors Sequoia Capital and Insight Partners also participated in this round.
The objectives behind the funding: The startup plans to deploy the proceeds to further strengthen its existing presence in 28 cities and widen to 300 cities and 4,000 towns in India by the end of 2021. Apna targets to scale up its edtech platform for skilling and invest in hiring talent and building world-class engineering and product capabilities. Apna also plans to venture into foreign markets such as the USA, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa starting in 2022.
About Apna
Founded in 2019 by former Apple executive Nirmit Parikh, Apna aims to solve the extensive challenge of unemployment, poverty and upskilling. It helps bottom-of-the-pyramid job seekers with generating a virtual business card. It then seeks out a match between job seekers and recruiters. Apna platform is presently available in 11 Indian languages and across 28 cities. Organisations such as the National Skill Development Corporation, UNICEF Yuwaah, and the Ministry of Minority Affairs of India have partnered with Apna in its mission to provide skilling and job opportunities to candidates. Currently, the company has over a 10 million user base and over 150k employers using its platform.
What the Founder has to say:
“I think, for me, valuations are nothing but a directional marker, that we are going in the right direction. We have had a stellar growth. Strong performance and consistent performance have created a lot of investor confidence. And that is why we see a bunch of investors doubling down,” said chief executive and founder Nirmit Parikh. “Today, our priority is India’s acceleration over monetisation. And, I think, job markets are coming back. So, very soon, we will also scale up our monetisation….all our pilots have been extremely successful,” he added.
What the Investor has to say:
“Apna’s viral adoption is driven by a novel social and interactive approach to connecting employers with job seekers. We expect job seekers in search of meaningful connections and vetted opportunities to drive Apna’s continued explosive growth across India – and the world,” said Griffin Schroeder, partner, Tiger Global.
“The funding gives apna more firepower to both double down on the things that are working as well as launch newer initiatives that better cater to the needs of their users. The company has established market leadership to become India’s largest jobs and professional networking platform in a very short time but is still not present across the country. The additional funding will help accelerate new city and new vertical launches,” said Harshjit Sethi, managing director for Sequoia India. “In the last five years, hundreds of millions of Indians have come online for the first time. Our conversations with some of these young, first-time internet users early on gave us an indication of just how aspirational they were. And we were convinced that a company that successfully caters to this emotion through employment and upskilling would become very successful. And that’s what led us to partner with apna right from the idea stage, in 2019”, adds Sethi of Sequoia.
With the latest funding round company has come more closure to its mission to connect people with opportunities. Covid outbreak helped the company to strengthen its pitch for the digital hiring platform Apna. The startup has an early-mover advantage in India’s over 300 million blue-collar workers market, which is also expected to grow by approximately 10 per cent every year.
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