SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund 2, backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., will make investments $50 million in software-as-a-service (SaaS) agency SenseHQ at a valuation of greater than $500 million, a senior firm government mentioned.
SenseHQ, run by Sense Expertise Labs Inc., is a HR-technology-enabled expertise engagement and staffing platform that helps firms rent and have interaction with candidates in bulk.
“With this funding, we’ll proceed to ramp up our go-to-market technique and improve consciousness with firms that rent at scale throughout quickly rising industries, together with healthcare, manufacturing, logistics and retail,” Sanjay Dharmani, managing director of Sense’s Indian unit mentioned in an interview.
With this spherical, Sense has raised $90 million in capital to date. SenseHQ is headquartered in San Francisco however has since arrange an Indian subsidiary in Telangana.
The corporate is concentrated totally on the US market and has largely been working with staffing companies to rent candidates at scale.
It’s going to now put money into increasing into areas corresponding to western Europe, UK, and different English-speaking international locations, Dharmani mentioned.
The corporate additionally plans to make use of the proceeds to take a position additional in its machine studying and knowledge science platforms, and broaden its product and tech groups, he mentioned, including Sense is aiming to hit an annual run charge of $100 million over the subsequent 18 to 24 months.
The corporate was based in 2015 by Anil Dharni and Pankaj Jindal to supply enterprise prepared answer for expertise acquisition groups in firms. It first raised capital from Accel Companions and GV, previously often called Google Ventures, in a Sequence A spherical in 2017, which additionally had traders corresponding to Signia Enterprise Companions, IDG Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.
Sense raised $13.5 million in Sequence B capital from Accel Companions and GV in 2019, following it up with a Sequence C spherical led by Aavatar Capital, a B2B tech and SaaS-focused enterprise capital agency, in June 2021.
That is SoftBank’s fourth funding in a SaaS enterprise this yr however is the smallest cheque that the agency has written in India to date. SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund 2 invested $90 million in enterprise know-how enterprise Whatfix in June this yr. Earlier in Might, it invested in Zeta, which offers providers to fintech firms.
Zeta, which began off as a meals voucher product for corporates, has pivoted to a neo banking service supplier.
SoftBank additionally made a follow-on funding in MindTickle in August, which propelled the corporate into unicorn membership this yr.
The VC fund has invested greater than $3 billion in Indian companies this yr, chairman Masayoshi Son mentioned final week. Son additionally mentioned SoftBank had invested $14 billion in India over the previous decade.
SoftBank’s portfolio firms in India embody Paytm, Snapdeal, Ola, Oyo, Flipkart, Swiggy, Delhivery and Lenskart.
Lots of its portfolio firms are lining up preliminary share choices over the subsequent yr.
Supply: Live Mint