India’s Contract Workforce Still Runs on Paper
India’s industrial and infrastructure sectors depend heavily on contract and blue-collar labour, yet workforce management remains fragmented. Attendance tracking, payroll, compliance, and contractor payouts are often handled manually, leading to inefficiencies, leakages, and limited financial inclusion for workers. As industrial clusters expand beyond metros, enterprises are increasingly seeking unified digital systems to manage labour at scale.
Funding Snapshot and Expansion Plans
Gurugram-based workforce management startup Arthum has raised ₹10 crore (around $1.09 million) in a seed funding round led by Caret Capital. The round also saw participation from Keynote Financial Services Limited and JS Global.
The capital will be used to strengthen Arthum’s technology stack, expand geographically, and deepen its financial product offerings, with new operations planned across Dehradun, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad.
What Arthum Is Building
Founded in 2023 by Darpan Sharma and Vishal Mishra, Arthum is building an integrated operating system for contract and blue-collar workforces. The platform connects enterprises, labour contractors, and workers on a single digital infrastructure, offering ERP-like tools such as geo-tagged attendance, automated payroll, digital payments, statutory compliance, and contract management.
Arthum currently automates operations for over 3 lakh labour contractors and has onboarded more than 6 lakh workers, largely across the Delhi NCR region.
Why This Funding Matters
Beyond workforce management, Arthum operates a neo-banking layer that leverages verified worker data to offer banking, insurance, credit, and investment products. Through partnerships with banks such as Yes Bank, ICICI Bank, and IDFC Bank, along with multiple NBFCs, the startup is positioning itself at the intersection of labour digitisation and financial inclusion. For Indian founders, Arthum’s raise highlights how solving operational pain points in large, informal workforces can unlock platform-scale opportunities across fintech and enterprise software.
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