Professional networking platform for blue and gray collar laborers Apna said it has gathered up $100 million in its Series C round drove by existing investor Tiger Global Management at a valuation of $1.1 billion, making it probably the fastest startup to achieve the pined for unicorn status.
The new round also saw investments from Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital India, Maverick Ventures and GSV Ventures.
It had only announced about Apna’s fundraise earlier this month.
This financing round comes three months after the company had raised $70 million in its Series B fundraise in June, co-drove by Insight Partners and Tiger Global. At the time, it was valued at $570 million.
According to Apna’s organizer and CEO Nirmit Parikh, the startup will utilize the assets to expand its platform across India. Continues will also be utilized for international expansion and to enter the upskilling portion for the blue and gray-collared workforce. It also plans to ramp up hiring across engineering and item works.
“We have registered a 125-overlay development in our business and facilitated more than 100 million interviews in the course of recent months. Throughout the last month alone, Apna facilitated more than 18 million interviews, and we have been consistently showcasing solid performance… work for the rising workforce is a large open door with almost 2.3 billion individuals falling under the category,” Parikh claimed.
The fundraise also made Apna, established in December 2019, one of the fastest to turn into a unicorn. InMobi’s Glance and Ola Electric attained unicorn status within two years of their launch. B2B internet business platform Udaan also took around two years to transform into a unicorn. Kunal Shah’s CRED joined the list within 29 months of its official launch.
Apna is the 27th startup to achieve unicorn status in 2021 alone. On Wednesday, e-sports and expertise gaming platform Mobile Premier League became a unicorn.
Just last month, seven startups including Zetwerk, Grofers, Eruditus, CoinDCX, upGrad, MindTickle and BharatPe had raised their new round at unicorn valuation.
Apna’s business model and traction
Apna gives better skilling and open positions to candidates by enabling vertical networks for painters, field sales agents, carpenters, among others on its platform.
With a presence in about 15 urban areas, Apna claims to address the dire and critical hiring needs of top companies in India. The list includes Zomato, Burger King, Bharti-AXA, Delhivery, Teamlease, G4S Global, Swiggy, Shadowfax and 1mg among others.
According to the company’s site, it has more than 10 million clients and has given positions to over 1.5 million candidates since its inception in early 2020.
Rivalry and past attempts at blue and gray collar hiring space
The company contends with OLX and Quikr’s blue and gray collar verticals, WorkIndia, TeamLease and several others. Baba Jobs and Aasaan Jobs were two prominent early attempts in space. Be that as it may, the two companies didn’t scale as expected and eventually consolidated with Quikr and OLX individually.
On Wednesday, Vahan, a task marketplace of regular laborers, raised $8 million worth Series A round drove by Silicon Valley-based investor Khosla Ventures.
