Hyderabad-based HR tech platform Keka has secured India’s largest series A SaaS funding with a whopping $57 million from WestBridge Capital.

Founded by Vijay Yalamanchilli in 2015, Keka entered the HR tech space as a bootstrapped company.

Having secured the historic funding, Yalamanchilli and his team have already taken steps to augment the product, enhance their offerings, and bolster customer support. “We want to build a world-class product here in India that will cater to the global market. As we advance, R&D will be our primary area of focus as we expand our engineering, product, and customer success teams,” he said.

Yalamanchili said business today means serving both customers and employees. While there have been plenty of tools to cover the customer experience, employee experience has taken a back seat. “Businesses can no longer afford to do that. We want to help organisations focus better on their core asset – the employees. Despite being bootstrapped all this while, we managed to thrive in the market, thanks to our employees and customers,” he added.

Although the company got several offers for funding in the past, it never felt the timing was right. “I believe we raised funding at the right time. Finding the right investment partner was also significant for us. We wanted to partner with someone with a long-term vision for the HR tech space. I am happy that we found the right investing partner in WestBridge Capital. This is not just about securing funding; it is also a validation of our ideas and approach in a world where many funded businesses are struggling to survive,” said Yalamanchili.

Rishit Desai, Principal at WestBridge Capital, said Keka is disrupting the industry through its world-class product and highly reliable customer support. "We are aligned with their vision to build the best mid-market focused global HR tech platform that will allow companies around the world to modernise their HR processes. We are very excited about Keka’s potential and look forward to a long partnership with the company."

‘Keka’, which means ‘awesome’ in Telugu, is an HR tech platform in India for SMEs with 20-5000 employees. The software streamlines and automates payroll, recruiting, leave and attendance, performance management, and more with ease.

Keka reached its 100-customer milestone in 2017 and grew exponentially in just a couple of years, crossing the $750K ARR in 2017 and achieving a 7-fold sales growth in 2020. By 2021, it had crossed the 5500-customer landmark, the company said in a statement.

Image: Vijay Yalamanchili, CEO of Keka.