Arthum raises ₹10 crore seed round led by Caret^Capital

Arthum, a Gurgaon-based startup building an operating system for contract workforce management, has raised ₹10 crore in a seed funding round led by Caret^Capital, with participation from Keynote Financial Services Limited and JS Global.

Founded in 2023 by Darpan Sharma and Vishal Mishra, Arthum was set up in the aftermath of the post-Covid labour migration crisis, aiming to formalise and digitise India’s largely informal contract workforce. The company positions its platform as a unified system connecting enterprises, labour contractors and workers on a single digital infrastructure.

The platform integrates functions such as geo-tagged attendance, payroll, digital payments, contracts and statutory compliance, creating a consolidated data layer for workforce management. Arthum said it currently automates operations for more than 3 lakh labour contractors and has onboarded over 1,500 contractors and more than 6 lakh workers, primarily across Delhi NCR.

Alongside workforce management, Arthum operates an integrated neo-banking layer that uses verified employment data to offer banking, insurance, loans and investment products to blue-collar workers. The company said this approach is intended to convert informal employment records into digital identities that can support access to formal financial services for a workforce estimated at around 100 million people nationwide.

“This investment will help us strengthen our technology stack, expand geographically, and unlock deeper financial inclusion through data-led credit and banking innovation,” Darpan Sharma, co-founder and chief executive officer of Arthum, said. He added that the company is expanding into industrial clusters including Dehradun, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

From the investor’s side, Pankaj Bansal of Caret^Capital said the fund is backing Arthum to accelerate the formalisation of India’s blue-collar workforce and labour contractors, adding that the model aligns with Caret^Capital’s focus on job creation.

Arthum said it has partnered with several banks, including Yes Bank, ICICI Bank and IDFC, and works with more than 15 non-banking financial companies, including Ugro Capital, Bajaj, Aditya Birla, Godrej, BlackSoil and Protium, to design financial products tailored for contract workers.

The funding comes as policymakers and enterprises increasingly focus on digitisation, compliance and financial inclusion in labour-intensive sectors. For Arthum, the immediate priority is scaling adoption across industrial regions while deepening its financial services offerings on top of workforce data.