Apna, The World’s 2nd Youngest Unicorn, Is Building India’s Frontline Workforce
Founded by Apple alum , Apna helps blue and gray-collar workers find jobs & collaborate with employers.
A 22-month-old startup in India that helps millions of blue- and gray-collar employees learn new skills and find work has become the world’s second-youngest unicorn. On Thursday, Apna revealed that it had received $100 million in a round headed by Tiger Global. Apna was valued at $1.1 billion in the new financing, which was dubbed a Series C. Last month, TechCrunch reported that Tiger Global, an existing Apna investor, was in talks to lead a $100 million financing round at a unicorn value.
The latest round also included participation from Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital India, Maverick Ventures, and GSV Ventures, making it Apna’s third investment this year. In June of this year, Apna raised $570 million in a Series B financing. Apna has seen tremendous development in recent months, which has piqued the interest of investors. The company’s 15-month-old eponymous Android app now has over 16 million users, up from 10 million in June of this year.
Hundreds of millions of low-skilled individuals migrate from countryside in quest of work in Indian cities. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has hindered various economic operations in the South Asian market, many of them have lost their jobs.
Apna has created a platform that gives these workers a sense of belonging. They interact with one another in the community, exchanging notes on how to perform better in interviews and advice on how to negotiate better compensation.
Apna also connects these employees with future employers. In an interview with TechCrunch, Apna founder and CEO Nirmit Parikh stated the platform has over 150,000 employers on it, including Zomato, Bharti AXA, Urban Company, BYJU’S, PhonePe, Burger King, Delhivery, Teamlease, and G4S Global, and over 5 million active jobs.
In the last 30 days, the firm, whose name is derived from a happy 2019 Bollywood song, has handled over 18 million job interviews, he claims. Apna is now available in 28 cities across India.
According to Parikh, the idea for Apna emerged after he was perplexed to discover that, despite the fact that India has hundreds of millions of blue- and gray-collar employees, finding them when you need help with a task is often difficult.
Prior to founding Apna, Parikh, who previously worked at Apple, met these employees and went undercover as an electrician and a floor manager to learn about their concerns. The connection was the issue, he discovered. Workers had no way of knowing who needed them for employment and had no way of communicating with one another. Apna’s community feature, which now has over 70 such organizations, is designed to alleviate this issue.
These workers can use the Apna app to gain new skills and expand their job prospects. Apna has become one of the fastest-growing upskilling platforms, which may explain why GSV Ventures and Owl Ventures, two well-known edtech investors, have invested in the Bangalore-based company.
“Apna’s viral popularity is fueled by a revolutionary social and interactive strategy to linking job seekers and businesses. In a statement, Griffin Schroeder, partner at Tiger Global, stated, “We expect job searchers in search of meaningful relationships and vetted possibilities to fuel Apna’s continued explosive expansion across India — and the world.”
Now that the platform has begun to be monetized, the firm is set to expand quickly. Apna will continue to expand in India, according to Parikh, and will begin its global expansion early next year. According to Parikh, the company is looking to expand in the United States, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
“We’ve already made a dent on the universe. Now we want to make a difference in the lives of 2.3 billion people,” he stated. “To deliver, we’ll need a massive amount of money and a world-class workforce. It’ll take a village to complete this massive undertaking. But someone needs to figure it out.”
