Apna, a job recruitment platform dedicated to blue and grey collar jobs, has scooped up fresh funding of $12.5 Mn in a fresh funding round spearheaded by Sequoia Capital India and Greenoaks Capital. Existing investors like Lightspeed India and Rocketship.VC also poured funds in the round.
The fresh funding seems to be a vindication of investor’s growing faith on Apna as the latest capital infusion has come barely 5 months after it raised $8mn from investors in a Series A round. This particular round took place in September 2020.
Commenting on the latest round, Sequoia’s Harshjit Sethi said “Apna is well on its way to building a professional social networking platform with millions of users in just a few months of launch.”
The startup will use the latest capital infusion for rolling out its services in new metro cities and Tier 2 territories as well as consolidating its position in the existing markets.
Apna was founded in December 2019 by Nirmit Parikh. Parikh is actually a veteran in the startup industry, having launched an AI startup Cruxbot in 2012. This startup was later acquired by Kno Inc.
The barely one-year-old startup claims to have clocked impressive traction in the market. This includes 6 Mn users and nearly 80K recruiters listed on its platform. Besides, the company claims that it has registered an impressive growth of nearly 50X during the last eight months. The company essentially offers its services through an app that compromises of various vertical communities.
India is currently witnessing a boom in the gig economy, which has led to the spurt of recruitment platforms that are completely dedicated for hiring blue-collar and grey-collar professionals. However, the sector is faced with several challenges since the sector is primarily unorganized.