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Bangalore: Apna, a digital hiring startup in India that connects millions of blue-collar workers with employers, reached a valuation of $1.1 billion with a new funding round led by Tiger Global Management.
The startup reached unicorn status 21 months after building the app and 15 months after starting full-scale operations. It has now raised $100 million in a Series C round, which also includes Ullu Ventures LLC, Insight Partners Inc and Sequoia Capital India. It serves more than 16 million users and 150,000 employers and conducts an average of 18 million job interviews each month, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
“We are solving the world’s biggest problem and, if successful, will remove not only unemployment but also poverty, health care and education for the next generation,” said Nirmeet Parikh, a Stanford graduate, who found his left for Apple Inc. 2019. 2019. The company is targeting “all 2.3 billion people in the emerging working class worldwide,” he said in a video interview from Dallas.
India’s 250 million low-skilled workers and Apna – which means “ours” in Hindi – accounted for 5 million job openings last month at an all-time high. The coronavirus outbreak accelerated digital hiring, leading to a boom in job listings in manufacturing and e-commerce as the country recovered from multiple infection waves.
The company is offering training courses that include spoken English and fine-tuning skills such as making ginger tea or creating pivot tables in Excel worksheets. This has seen a recent boom in new job seekers in more advanced fields such as software engineering, graphic design and legal work. “Instead of job seekers, we call them budding workers,” said the 33-year-old Apna founder.
The app is currently available in 11 Indian languages across 28 cities. It will cover almost all Indian cities by the end of the year before expanding to the US, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa in early 2022.
Pyramid helps job seekers with setting up simple profiles requiring only their name, age and skills to generate their virtual business card. It then looks for a match between employers like Amazon.com Inc., online learning startup Byju’s, Burger King, or smaller enterprises and neighborhood grocery stores. The firm has also created 70 community networks for experts in various fields, from beauticians to electricians, to learn from peers and discuss opportunities.bloomberg
Read also: Mobile Premier League Becomes India’s Second Gaming Unicorn With $2.3 Billion Valuation
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