PagarBook
Bengaluru, IN · Founded 2019 · 723 employees on LinkedIn · 6 known investors
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PagarBook is a staff and payroll management product used by small and medium-sized businesses across India, operated by Gyankaar Technologies Pvt Ltd. The page reports over 80 lakh registered SMEs and presence in more than 650 districts in India.
Also known as Gyankaar Technologies Pvt Ltd · Pagarbook
Founders & leadership
PagarBook was founded in 2019 by Arya Gautam, Rupesh Kumar Mishra, and Adarsh Kumar.
Investors · 6
Also in the syndicate · 1
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements- Undisclosed amountSeries A3Jun 2021
A$AP Capital, AngelList, India Quotient, MV Opportunities India, PA Fund I, Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)
Source ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Valuation · disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed — follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026PagarBook, operated by Bengaluru-based Gyankaar Technologies Pvt Ltd, provides staff attendance, salary and payroll management software aimed at Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs and MSMEs). Its product suite includes a premium mobile app (selfie- and location-based attendance, manager mode, cashbook), desktop payroll software with PF/ESI handling, bulk payments and dashboards, "Lens" touchless facial attendance using an Android device camera, and a staff-facing app through which workers mark attendance and access salary slips. The platform automates salary calculation from attendance inputs including overtime, late fines, leaves and half-days, records advances, deductions and loans, generates and shares payslips, records cash-in/cash-out and business expenses, enables online salary and advance payments, and sends SMS/notification reminders to staff and vendors.
The company positions itself as a human capital platform for the blue- and grey-collar workforce, which it describes as structurally different from white-collar employment: employers commonly track attendance and daily advances across multiple paper ledgers, and workers typically lack documented employment or earnings records. India Quotient founding partner Anand Lunia has characterised PagarBook as among the first companies in India to issue a payslip to every blue-collar worker, creating a financial and employment profile for them.
PagarBook pivoted in 2022 from financial services to a software-as-a-service model for Indian SMEs. Reported financials for the fiscal year ended March 2024 show operating revenue of Rs 13 crore and a loss of Rs 70.4 crore, including an exceptional item expense of Rs 36.4 crore. Co-founder Rupesh Mishra stated in April 2025 that the company had an annual revenue run rate of Rs 60 crore and had turned cashflow positive in March 2025.
Founding story
Co-founders Adarsh Kumar, Arya Adarsha Gautam and Rupesh Kumar Mishra all came from Tier II and Tier III cities in India. Adarsh and Arya were batchmates at IIT Bombay, while Rupesh studied engineering at a college in Jaipur and was introduced to the other two by a shared mentor. The team first built GyanApp in 2018, an Indian-language knowledge-sharing platform conceived as a local equivalent of Quora, raising funding from India Quotient. Finding that market difficult, they told their investor so and, at Anand Lunia's suggestion, researched the SME sector more deeply. Between October and December 2018 they met more than 300 SME owners and their employees across retail, wholesale, hardware, embroidery, loom, construction, furniture and diamond businesses in Surat, Ahmedabad, Patna, Sivan, Jaipur, New Delhi and Bengaluru, identifying salary, attendance and record-keeping as recurring pain points. PagarBook was launched in 2019.
Business model
PagarBook sells staff attendance and payroll management software to Indian SMEs, offering a premium mobile app, desktop payroll software, a facial-recognition attendance product and a staff app. It also sells attendance hardware, with a biometric device (iD 8.0) listed at Rs 18,000 plus GST as a one-time hardware fee against a stated list price of Rs 27,000. The company shifted from a financial services model to a SaaS model in 2022.
Revenue comes from paid software products (premium app and desktop payroll software) and a one-time hardware fee for its biometric attendance device. Reported annual revenue run rate was Rs 60 crore as of April 2025, with FY2024 operating revenue of Rs 13 crore.
Traction
The company's site reports more than 80 lakh registered SMEs, presence in over 650 districts in India and usage across 10+ languages. In 2021 the user base was reported to have grown to eight million over the prior six months. FY2024 operating revenue was Rs 13 crore with a loss of Rs 70.4 crore; ARR was reported at Rs 60 crore and the company said it turned cashflow positive in March 2025.
Latest developments
In April 2025 the company was reported to be raising Rs 10 crore (about $1.2 million) in an ongoing Series A5 round from Peak XV Partners at a Rs 163 crore valuation, with proceeds earmarked for expansion and growth; following the allotment Peak XV would hold 21.62%. Management said the company turned cashflow positive in March 2025 with an ARR of Rs 60 crore. The website is promoting pre-booking of an iD 8.0 biometric device.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
PagarBook operates in the Indian SME payroll and attendance software segment, describing a market of roughly 56 million enterprises employing about 124 million people. Coverage notes the difficulty of monetising Indian SMEs given the sector's fragmentation and prevalence of off-book transactions, reflected in the company's large funding burn and steep valuation reduction.
Focus on the blue- and grey-collar workforce rather than white-collar payroll, including features tailored to daily/weekly/hourly and work-basis staff, advance payments, late fines and overtime; multilingual interfaces for non-English-speaking users; and digital payslips that create formal earnings records for workers.
Technology
Mobile apps for Android and iOS plus desktop software with real-time data synchronisation between devices. Attendance can be captured via selfie, location or face biometrics; the Lens product provides touchless facial attendance using AI on an Android device camera. The platform supports payroll calculation with PF/ESI, bulk and online payments, payslip generation, SMS and WhatsApp payslip sharing, and a user interface in over 10 languages (reported as 13 languages in 2021).
Go-to-market
Small and medium enterprises and MSMEs in India, including retail shops, wholesalers, manufacturers (hardware, embroidery, loom, furniture, diamond), construction firms and services businesses, typically employing between four and 20 workers; end users also include the blue- and grey-collar staff of these businesses.", "go_to_market">
Geography
Headquartered in HSR Layout, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, with reported presence in more than 650 Indian districts. A reported acquisition of Indonesian staff management startup Vara suggested potential Southeast Asian expansion.
History
GyanApp was started in 2018 as an Indian-language knowledge-sharing platform backed by India Quotient. After the team pivoted, PagarBook was founded in 2019 and raised a $15 million Series A from Sequoia Capital India and India Quotient in 2020, having also been part of Sequoia India's Surge programme. Reports indicate roughly 80 employees were laid off in 2022 amid cash constraints and product setbacks, and that the company raised additional funding at a reported $100 million valuation. In 2022 it pivoted from financial services to SaaS. Also in 2022, PagarBook was reported to be acquiring Indonesian staff management startup Vara (platform Bukugaji) in an all-stock deal valued at about $5.6 million. In April 2025 the company was reported to be raising a Series A5 round of Rs 10 crore (about $1.2 million) from Peak XV Partners at a Rs 163 crore valuation, an approximately 85% decline from its Series A4 valuation of Rs 1,084 crore ($127 million).
Risks & controversies
Reported layoffs of around 80 employees in 2022 attributed to cash shortages and product failures; an approximately 85% valuation decline between the Series A4 and Series A5 rounds; FY2024 loss of Rs 70.4 crore against Rs 13 crore operating revenue; and commentary on the structural difficulty of monetising India's fragmented SME segment. The reported Vara acquisition was not accompanied by official company announcements.
Compiled by commissioned research from 6 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 6
by search overlap
Companies competing with PagarBook for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 6
launches, deals, and filingsBoard passed a special resolution to issue 1,826 Series A5 CCCPS at Rs 54,764.5 each to raise Rs 10 crore (about $1.2 million) from Peak XV Partners at a Rs 163 crore ($19 million) valuation, about 85% below the Series A4 valuation of Rs 1,084 crore ($127 million). The round was reported as ongoing; Peak XV would hold 21.62% post-allotment.
$1.2M source ↗
PagarBook was reported to be acquiring Vara (platform Bukugaji), an Indonesian SME staff management startup founded in 2020, in an all-stock deal said to be worth $5.6 million; Vara had raised a $4.8M seed at an estimated $15.5M valuation. No official company announcement was made.
$5.6M source ↗
The company pivoted in 2022 from being a financial services provider to a software-as-a-service provider for Indian SMEs.
PagarBook was reported to have laid off around 80 employees due to cash shortages and product failures.
$15M source ↗
Before the pivot to PagarBook, the founding team started GyanApp in 2018, an Indian-language knowledge-sharing platform, and raised funding from India Quotient.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 6
primary sources listed
- PagarBookpagarbook.com · web
6 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does PagarBook do?
- PagarBook is an Indian staff attendance and payroll management platform for small and medium enterprises.
- Who founded PagarBook?
- PagarBook was founded by Arya Gautam, Rupesh Kumar Mishra, Adarsh Kumar in 2019.
- Who are PagarBook's investors?
- PagarBook's investors include India Quotient, Peak XV Partners, Vibe Capital, iSeed, Sequoia Capital.
- Where is PagarBook headquartered?
- PagarBook is headquartered in Bengaluru, IN.