SenseHQ, a SaaS business, will get a $50 million investment from SoftBank.
According to a senior corporate official, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, funded by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., would invest $50 million in software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm SenseHQ at a valuation of more than $500 million.
SenseHQ, run by Sense Talent Labs Inc., is a talent engagement and staffing platform powered by HR technology that allows businesses employ and engage with applicants in bulk.
In an interview, Sanjay Dharmani, managing director of Sense’s Indian unit, said, “With this funding, we will continue to ramp up our go-to-market strategy and increase awareness with companies that hire at scale across rapidly growing industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and retail.”
Sense has now raised a total of $90 million in funding. SenseHQ is based in San Francisco, although it has now established a Telangana-based subsidiary.
The company is mostly focused on the US market, and it has primarily worked with staffing organisations to hire candidates on a large scale.
It will now invest in places such as Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking countries, according to Dharmani.
He added that Sense is seeking to attain an annual run rate of $100 million over the next 18 to 24 months, and that the revenues will be used to invest more in its machine learning and data science platforms, as well as expand its product and engineering teams.
Anil Dharni and Pankaj Jindal launched the company in 2015 to provide an enterprise-ready solution for talent acquisition teams in businesses. In a Series A round in 2017, it received funding from Accel Partners and GV, formerly known as Google Ventures, as well as other investors such as Signia Venture Partners, IDG Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.
In 2019, Sense raised $13.5 million in Series B funding from Accel Partners and GV, followed by a Series C investment in June 2021 headed by Aavatar Capital, a B2B tech and SaaS-focused venture capital firm.
This is SoftBank’s fourth investment in a SaaS company this year, but it is the firm’s lowest check in India to date. In June of this year, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 invested $90 million in corporate technology company Whatfix. It invested in Zeta, a company that provides services to fintech startups, earlier this month.
Zeta, which began as a corporate food voucher business, has evolved into a neo banking service provider.
In August, SoftBank made a follow-on investment in MindTickle, propelling the company into the unicorn club this year.
