HR TECH HAS PRODUCED TWO UNICORNS SO FAR—DARWINBOX AND APNA.CO. FUNDING INTO THE SECTOR HAS BEEN RISING, BUT IT IS ONLY A FRACTION OF THE MONEY FLOWING INTO EDTECH AND FINTECH

THE START-UPS TYPICALLY FALL INTO THREE BUCKETS: END-TO-END HRMS, HIRING & RECRUITMENT, AND NICHE PLAY SUCH AS REMOTE INTERVIEWING

BLUE-COLLAR WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS ARE EMERGING AS A SIGNIFICANT SPACE, DRIVEN BY THE SMARTPHONE AND DATA REVOLUTION, AND ALSO THE PANDEMIC

when the HR department had a software system to only manage attendance and payroll. Want someone to take care of online application tracking? Check. Need to outsource video interviewing? Not a problem. Require help with employee engagement during hiring? It can be taken care of. Today, there’s a SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform available for almost every conceivable people function—courtesy several start-ups trying to solve for all possible gaps in the hire-to-retire employee journey. “Organisations realise that people make a company. Raw materials or factory assets don’t—they are essential, but that’s the extent of it,” says salary-on-demand start-up Refyne’s Co-founder and CTO Apoorv Kumar, calling Covid-19 an inflection point in the journey of HR tech start-ups. Its flagship product of Earned Wage Access allows employees to withdraw from whatever salary they have