Spotting that Indian HR teams were trapped in disconnected payroll and attendance tools, Keka built a unified workforce platform that today serves more than 10,000 organisations globally
By integrating hiring, payroll, attendance, performance management and employee engagement into a single system, Keka transformed from an HRMS provider into a deeply embedded workforce operations platform
The pandemic accelerated enterprise adoption of Keka's mobile-first platform, while its latest push embeds AI across hiring, performance and workforce planning as it eyes expansion across India, the Middle East and the US
It was 2014, and HR managers were actively discussing how they could move beyond traditional administrative responsibilities to become strategic business partners. At the time, HR departments across India were largely confined to back-office functions such as payroll and attendance management, with limited technology available to support broader people management functions and strategic decision-making.
Vijay Yalamanchili, now the founder and CEO of Keka (an HR tech platform), was watching this closely. He observed that the HR tech SaaS market was getting stifled with highly fragmented payroll and attendance management tools. Therefore, to salvage the HR function, he envisioned a platform that could track the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring to retirement. To usher the HR function into a new age, Yalamanchili focused on solving connected workflows instead of building isolated features.
That vision led to the launch of Keka in 2016.
Keka today serves more than 10,000 organisations globally. It offers a unified platform for managing everything from payroll and attendance to hiring, performance management, employee engagement and workforce analytics.
It also allows businesses to manage a wide range of workforce functions on a single platform, including onboarding, performance management, OKRs, hiring workflows, geofencing, workforce analytics, employee engagement, timesheets, resource allocation, and profitability tracking.
Today, Keka is a ₹130 Cr+ revenue-generating company. Interestingly, most of this growth has been achieved in the last few years. Its revenues in 2021 stood at ₹14.5 Cr. The company claims to have achieved 10X ARR growth since its institutional funding round of $1.6 Mn in 2021. Its next funding milestone came in 2022 when it raised $57 Mn in Series A funding from WestBridge Capital.
So, what enabled it to identify the opportunity and win in a crowded HR software market? The answer to this lies in how Yalamanchili looked at the market to find the product-market fit (PMF).
Keka’s early growth was driven by fast-growing mid-market businesses in tier II and emerging business hubs. While these companies were mobile-first, operationally distributed and scaling rapidly across sectors, they were still managing workforce operations through spreadsheets, fragmented tools and manual processes.
Also, most HR software categories treated payroll, attendance, leave management, performance and hiring as separate products. Yalamanchili saw them as parts of the same operational workflow, and the insight became the company’s core thesis.
Instead of building point solutions, the founder focused on integrating workforce workflows into a single platform, which became the biggest competitive edge in a crowded HR tech market.
But a major turning point came during the pandemic when people started working from home.
Enterprises that had traditionally relied on legacy HR systems suddenly needed mobile-first platforms capable of supporting the HR function remotely.
Keka’s mobile-first architecture and integrated workflow approach became particularly relevant during this period. “Covid-19 was a major inflexion point for us. Enterprise adoption accelerated significantly, which pushed us to invest deeper into compliance, workflow customisation, analytics and scale,” said Yalamanchili.
Businesses that initially adopted Keka for attendance or payroll gradually expanded usage into performance management, onboarding, hiring and employee engagement workflows.
“Usage across the organisation and retention were the clearest signals. When teams started relying on the product for core workflows, we knew we had strong product-market fit,” Yalamanchili said
In the crowded HR tech market, Keka differentiated itself by moving beyond being a payroll and attendance software provider to become a broader workforce operations platform serving businesses across industries.
The founder said that when Keka incorporated, most HR Tech platforms were designed primarily for administrators and compliance teams.
“We, however, wanted to build the ‘iPhone of HRMS’ — simple, intuitive, secure and designed for real-world usability and daily use by employees and HRs alike, integrating everyday workflows such as attendance, leave applications, payroll access, approvals, onboarding, and performance tracking,” he said.
This helped Keka improve product stickiness within organisations. Once employees, managers, HR teams and finance departments all began using the same system regularly, the platform became more deeply embedded into day-to-day operations.
Then, the company positioned workforce operations not merely as an HR problem, but as a broader business continuity challenge. In sectors such as healthcare and logistics, there was a dire need for integrated workforce management systems to ensure operational efficiency. Solving challenges such as shift scheduling, overtime calculations, and payroll accuracy helped Keka position itself as more than an HRMS provider and gain traction among larger enterprises.
AI is Keka’s next big quest. The platform is using the tech to improve operational intelligence and decision-making across workforce systems. Rather than launching a standalone AI product, Keka has embedded AI across hiring, performance management and workforce planning workflows.
Its AI features include automated job description creation, candidate screening and interview-question generation in Keka Hire, AI-assisted goal setting in performance management, and role-based (objectives and key results) OKR recommendations. The company is using AI to streamline candidate communication and surface workforce insights, positioning AI as a layer that improves decision-making and productivity across existing HR workflows.
“The wedge is still around outcomes but is powered by AI-driven clarity. Instead of just automating workflows, the focus would be on decision-making — highlighting gaps, surfacing insights, and enabling better actions across the organisation,” the founder said.
In India’s cut-throat HR tech market, where startups and global software companies are expanding across payroll, hiring, employee engagement and workforce management, Yalamanchili believes the market is still significantly underpenetrated.
According to the founder, more than 50% of Indian businesses still do not use a formal HR system, creating a large opportunity for workforce digitisation.
Keka’s next big leap, besides AI, is to deepen its presence across India, the Middle East, and the US. Keka also expects rising opportunities in sectors such as healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and professional services, where workforce complexity continues to increase.
From spotting a gap in fragmented HR software to building a workforce operating system, Keka has come a long way. But with AI reshaping how businesses hire, manage and engage talent, can Keka stay ahead of the curve?
[Edited by Shishir Parasher]
Source: Inc42 - Startups
