'Apna' for India's workers raises $12.5 million

Apna, a startup by an Apple alum has raised an additional $12.5 million, just five months after securing $8 million from high-profile investors.

Apna said Sequoia Capital India and Greenoaks Capital led the $12.5 million investment in the startup. Existing investors Lightspeed India and Rocketship VC also participated in the round in what is an extended Series A. The startup, whose name is Hindi for “ours,” has now raised more than $20 million.

An analysis of the platform showed how workers are helping one another solve problems - such as a beautician advising another beautician to perform hair dressing in a particular way that tends to make customers happier and tip more, and someone sharing how they negotiated a hike in their salary from their employer.

The startup has become an attraction for several big firms, including Amazon, Flipkart, Unacademy, Byju’s, Swiggy, BigBasket, Dunzo, BlueStar and Grofers, which have joined as recruiters to hire workers. Apna offers a straightforward onboarding process - thanks to support for multiple local languages - and allows users to create a virtual business card, which is then shown to the potential recruiters. Parikh said Apna’s AI understands the cultural nuances, helping recruiters find the best candidates for their needs.

Nirmit Parikh, Apna Founder and Chief Executive said the past six months have been all about growth at Apna. The app, available on Android, had 1.2 million users in August last year, for instance. During this period, there have been 60 million interactions between recruiters and potential applicants, he said. The platform, which has amassed more than 80,000 employers, has a retention rate of over 95%.

Parikh got the idea of building Apna after he kept hearing about the difficulty his family and friends faced in India in hiring people. This was puzzling to Parikh, as he wondered how could there be a shortage of workers in India when there are hundreds of millions of people actively looking for such jobs. The problem, Parikh realized, was that there wasn’t a scalable networking infrastructure in place to connect workers with employers.

Before creating the startup, Parikh met workers and went undercover as an electrician and floor manager to understand the problems workers were facing. That journey has not ended. The startup talks to over 15,000 users each day to understand what else Apna could do for them.