2007/BT/BT Co-founder, Darwinbox, India
Shri Jayant Paleti is one of India’s most celebrated young entrepreneurs, whose audacious vision of building a world-class technology platform from India has been realised through Darwinbox, the country’s first HR technology unicorn. He earned his B.Tech. in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2007, where he was actively engaged in campus life as Literary Secretary, a coordinator of Shaastra, and a keen participant in football and quizzing. He later earned his MBA in Finance from Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, where he captained the football team and was also awarded the scholarship for all round excellence.
Before co-founding Darwinbox, Shri Jayant built a strong foundation in finance and strategy through roles at Modelytics, Deloitte, and Ernst and Young, where he advised on mergers, acquisitions, and private equity transactions across life sciences and infrastructure sectors for large multinational clients. This grounding in enterprise problem-solving and deal execution gave him the insight into organisational complexity that would later shape Darwinbox’s product philosophy.
In 2015, Shri Jayant co-founded Darwinbox, a cloud-based HR technology platform that today serves over 1,000 enterprises and four million employees across 130 countries. Under his leadership, Darwinbox achieved unicorn status in just seven years, becoming the youngest and fastest-growing Asia-origin firm to be featured on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites, a distinction it has maintained consecutively from 2021 to 2025. The company has raised growth capital from some of the world’s most respected investors including Salesforce Ventures, Microsoft, TCV, KKR, Partners Group, and OTPP, and has scaled into a global organisation of over 1,400 people. Shri Jayant personally led early market expansion across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the United States, building Darwinbox into a platform that is trusted by enterprises from Bangalore to Bahrain to Boston.
Shri Jayant’s entrepreneurial achievements have been widely recognised. He has been listed among the Top 200 Self-Made Entrepreneurs of the Millennium by Hurun India, featured among Emerging Indian SaaS Leaders by Forbes, named in the NASSCOM Emerge 50, and honoured by Deloitte’s TechFast 50 India for rapid growth and innovation. He is a CFA charterholder and a frequent speaker at forums including SaaSBoomi, the NASSCOM Product Conclave, and Microsoft Build for India. A committed believer in building the next generation of Indian technology companies, he is an active mentor and angel investor in early-stage startups, including several founded by IIT Madras alumni such as Turno, Arintra, and Track3D.
In recognition of his remarkable entrepreneurial achievement in building India’s first HR technology unicorn, his unwavering commitment to global innovation rooted in India, and his generous contribution to the startup ecosystem as a mentor and investor, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and its alumni are proud to confer Shri Jayant Paleti with the Young Alumni Achiever Award for the year 2026.
