Darwinbox Raises $40M to Drive Global Growth and Agentic AI Innovation

Darwinbox, Asia’s largest AI-powered HR tech platform, has secured $40 million in funding from Canada’s Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG). This comes on the heels of the company’s $140 million round led by Partners Group and KKR in March 2025, through which 3one4 Capital secured a high multiple partial exit.

The back-to-back capital infusions underscore the strength of Darwinbox’s position in the fast-evolving HR technology market and its ability to attract long-term institutional investors a global scale.

With this latest raise, Darwinbox is doubling down on two clear priorities: scaling its AI-first innovation, including advancements in agentic AI, and accelerating its rapid North American expansion, where it has already grown 3X year-on-year since entering the market.

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A Market on the Move

The human capital management (HCM) sector is in the middle of a generational transformation. By 2030, the market is expected to surpass $38 billion globally, driven by digitisation, hybrid workforces, and the growing importance of data-driven decision-making in talent management. Legacy incumbents have struggled to keep pace with these shifts, leaving enterprises seeking modern, agile platforms that can adapt as quickly as the workforce itself.

Darwinbox has positioned itself at this intersection of need and innovation. Today, it serves over 1,000 enterprises and 4 million employees across 130 countries. Its success has not come from incremental improvements but from reimagining what HR technology can deliver in a world where agility, personalisation, and predictive intelligence are non-negotiable.

Jayant Paleti, Co-Founder of Darwinbox, said, “HR tech, when done right, can unlock outsized value for every enterprise, yet the old guard of HCM vendors still falls short of that leap. Darwinbox exists to change that story, building the next-gen HCM company, global by design, AI‑first at the core, and relentlessly focused on customer outcomes.” 

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The Agentic AI Advantage

At the heart of this round is Darwinbox’s focus on agentic AI, a new paradigm that goes beyond predictive analytics to autonomous action. While generative AI brought natural-language fluency to enterprise systems, agentic AI promises to extend that capability into decision-making and execution, enabling HR systems that don’t just advise but act.

Darwinbox has been a consistent first-mover in applying emerging technologies to HR. The company recently became the world’s first HCM platform to support the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that enables secure, AI-driven interactions at enterprise scale. By integrating such frameworks, Darwinbox ensures its AI systems are not only powerful but also safe, auditable, and enterprise-ready.

This next phase of AI-led innovation builds on a suite of existing breakthroughs that already make Darwinbox a category leader:

• The AI-native People OS that integrates predictive analytics, generative AI, and voice-enabled automation into one intuitive system.
  
  
• “Darwin”, the AI-powered voicebot, simplifies daily HR tasks through voice-based commands.
  
  
• Multi-country payroll that ensures seamless compliance for global workforces.
  
  
• One universal identity for full-time, contract, and gig workers, enabling enterprises to manage hybrid teams with precision.
  
  

By embedding agentic AI, Darwinbox is setting the stage for HR technology that can anticipate workforce needs, recommend interventions, and autonomously execute workflows, from adjusting staffing levels to optimising compensation models.

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Scaling in North America

While Darwinbox has built a strong global footprint across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, its most significant growth story is currently unfolding in North America. Since entering the market, the company has recorded 3X year-on-year growth.

This trajectory is particularly noteworthy in a region dominated by well-entrenched players. Winning market share requires not only product excellence but also a robust go-to-market strategy and the ability to integrate seamlessly with the complex systems of Fortune 500 companies. Darwinbox’s success signals that it has found the formula: a modern, AI-native platform with consumer-grade usability and enterprise-grade robustness.

The $40 million infusion will fuel deeper investments in sales, partnerships, and localisation for the North American market. With enterprises increasingly focused on employee experience and productivity, Darwinbox’s AI-led platform is well-positioned to become the system of record for forward-looking organisations.

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Industry Recognition

Darwinbox’s rapid ascent has been validated by both analysts and customers.

• Gartner recognised Darwinbox as the youngest-ever entrant to its Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites, a rare feat for an Asian-origin company.
  
  
• Forrester has consistently highlighted its breadth of features, usability, and innovation velocity.
  
  
• On Gartner Peer Insights, Darwinbox has earned the coveted Customer’s Choice badge four years running, with a 96% recommendation rate, the highest among global HR tech providers.
  
  

Such accolades not only validate the technology but also reflect the strong resonance the platform has built with HR leaders and employees worldwide.

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From Early Backing to Global Scale

For 3one4 Capital, Darwinbox represents a partnership that began at the seed stage in 2016. At the time, SaaS in India was still emerging, and few believed that a homegrown enterprise software company could take on entrenched global incumbents.

But the founders - Jayant Paleti, Chaitanya Peddi, and Rohit Chennamaneni - brought not just a bold vision but also technical depth and early execution. Chaitanya had already built much of the product even before the seed round, demonstrating the team’s capability. Their ambition was not to be “good enough” but to be an order-of-magnitude better: a platform capable of replacing legacy systems in the most demanding enterprise environments.

From those early beginnings, Darwinbox has scaled into a global leader with a world-class cap table including 3one4 Capital, TCV, Microsoft, Salesforce Ventures, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India), and Lightspeed. Along the way, it has displaced legacy systems more than 550 times, maintained a stellar 110% Net Revenue Retention (NRR), and expanded international revenue to contribute over half of new ARR.

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Looking Ahead

With $40 million in fresh capital, Darwinbox enters a new chapter defined by scale, intelligence, and global ambition. The combination of agentic AI innovation and North American expansion positions it to not only compete with but also set the agenda for the next generation of HR technology.

For the Indian SaaS ecosystem, Darwinbox’s rise offers a playbook on how to build global category leaders: start with a bold vision, obsess over product-market fit, execute relentlessly, and back it up with strong fundamentals.

At 3one4 Capital, we are proud to have partnered with Darwinbox since its early days. From backing the team at seed to celebrating fund-returning outcomes and now watching them scale globally, the journey has been extraordinary.

As Darwinbox enters this new chapter, the company carries with it the best of India’s SaaS story: ambition, resilience, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.