From being a pariah to becoming a darling of the big enterprises, India's newly-minted unicorn Darwinbox took on big daddies of enterprise software—SAP and Oracle—to disrupt the HR tech space
From L to R - Jayant Paleti, Chaitanya Peddi and Rohit Chennamaneni, Co-founders, Darwinbox
It was one of the Mondays in July 2016. Jayant Paleti, an investment banker with more than five years of experience at EY and Deloitte, was about to do something crazy with his partners. The IIT Madras and IIM Lucknow alumnus had co-founded human resources (HR) tech platform Darwinbox along with Chaitanya Peddi and Rohit Chennamaneni in late 2015. Over six months later to that day in July, the trio decide to defy common sense. “Do you really know who you are gunning for?” asked one of their mentors. “Don’t tell me you want to take them head-on!”
The challenge indeed was quite formidable, to say the least. The three greenhorns—the Johnny-come-latelies had quit their jobs in 2015—were gearing up to pit their fledgling startup against enterprise software giants such as SAP and Oracle. “Remember, their balance sheets are as large as GDPs of African geographies,” came another word of caution, trying to temper the bravado of the friends who had made up their minds to throw caution to the wind.