Exclusive: Sequoia leads $7 Mn round in Pagarbook; valuation jumps 5.3X

Employee management app Pagarbook has raised around $7 million (Rs 51 crore) in its Series A funding round led by existing backer Sequoia’s Surge.

Sequoia’s Surge has led the funding round with an infusion of Rs 44.21 crore, whereas IQ Alpha invested Rs 6.62 crore. Pagarbook has allotted 10 equity and 3917 Series A1 CCPS at an issue price of Rs 129,460.92 per share to raise Rs 50.83 crore, shows regulatory filings. 

Entrackr had exclusively reported about Pagarbook’s upcoming Series A round.This is the first tranche of the ongoing round and the company is expected to receive more capital in the coming months. 

Founded by Adarsh Kumar and Rupesh Kumar Mishra, PagarBook lets small companies maintain attendance, salaries, advance payments, payroll management. Its mobile app is available across 12 languages including Hindi, Hinglish, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali and Tamil.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, the company has been valued at around Rs 326 crore or $44.5 million (post-money). This is a jump of 5.3X in valuation as compared to the last round when it raised Rs 16 crore seed funding in June this year at a valuation of around Rs 61 crore. 

Post the latest allotment, Pagarbook promoters’— Kumar and Mishra collective shareholding has been diluted from 52.45% to 43.49% with Kumar being the larger shareholder with 22.24% stake. The latter owns 18.2% stake in the company.

With this infusion Sequoia Surge has increased its stake to 33.42%, becoming the single largest shareholder in the Bengaluru based startup. It is followed by IQ Alpha which controls 14.46%, while ESOPs and Kunal Shah’s QED Innovation labs constitute 8.63% collectively stake in the startup. 

According to the company’s website, it has over 30 lakh registered SMEs who have managed payroll of more than 60 lakh registered employees. The app also allows businesses to generate salary slips, send notifications and generate invoices.

PagarBook is the second startup for Kumar and Gupta. Earlier, the duo built GyanApp that used to be a vernacular social media platform for quality knowledge sharing. Backed by India Quotient, GyanApp had shut down its operations in October 2019.