On April 25, 2024, Mynavi Corporation acquired Awign Enterprises Private Limited in India and established it as a Mynavi subsidiary. Representatives of Awign and Mynavi Solutions India offered their comments on the acquisition.
Link:https://www.mynavi.jp/eng/news/2024/04/post_43355.html
What is Awign Enterprises Private Limited?
A major social issue in India is the extremely large disparity in employment opportunities and compensation resulting from defective educational systems and disparities among regions. Quality-related issues arising from structural issues in the temping industry are also becoming more prominent. Solutions for these issues are urgently needed.
Awign builds unique technology platforms that assign and configure tasks to ensure that business projects undertaken from clients can be completed at a high degree of quality by blue or gray collar workers (gig workers). More than 1.5 million gig workers currently use Awign.
Awign has been resolving social issues in India by improving the livelihoods of many people through the creation of employment opportunities, even in remote areas, and contributing to high-quality results for clients.
Founder & CEO: Annanya Sarthak
Establishment: July 2016
URL: https://www.awign.com/
The History and Future of Awign – CEO Annanya Sarthak
Awign is a pioneer in the Future of Work in India, with a vision to become the single largest Work Fulfillment platform in the world. Awign will continue to break barriers and set the global standard in truly defining the future of work in the new century.
Over the past seven years, we have built a unique technology platform that can automate workflows of multiple job functions, enabling enterprises to convert fixed costs into variable costs, while seamlessly executing their critical work activities end to end, across more than 500 cities in India. This model has ensured consistently high-quality outcomes are delivered to enterprises while also impacting the livelihoods of millions of individuals who were previously unable to earn a living in their hometowns.
Through this strategic partnership with Mynavi, we believe we will be able to achieve a social impact of delivering over a billion dollars in revenue and strengthen our mission to deeply change the face of unemployment and underemployment, by creating meaningful livelihoods for millions of people all over the world.
From left to right: Praveen Kumar Sah (Awign CTO), Gurpreet Singh (Awign CBO), Annanya Sarthak (Awign CEO)
Hidekazu Ito – Mynavi Solutions India
Since its founding as the Indian subsidiary of Mynavi in October 2018, Mynavi India has worked towards it mission of “Encourage India growth, Create shared value.” We have been investing in businesses that contribute to solving social issues in the fields of education and human resources to expand businesses and achieve a social impact.
I met with Awign promoters around March 2021, when India was facing the crisis of the COVID-19 Delta variant. The astonishing scenes in India at the time were also being reported on by the Japanese media. Awign was also severely hit by the crisis, and its monthly revenue went down to almost zero, but the company somehow recovered and achieved growth because of the promoters’ commitment and resilience.
We then participated in Awign’s growth journey through its series B funding round that closed in August 2022. As we continued communicating with the promoters as a stock owner, we realized that Awign was very compatible with our strategy and mission/vision in the India market, and decided to acquire Awign with the goal of making it the core of our overseas business.
Around six months after the end of series B, we decided to acquire Awign, and spent the next year or so discussing, calculating, and negotiating the conditions. The negotiations were very tough, since Awign had around 50 stock owners and promoters from other companies, PEs, VCs, and angel investors, but we successfully completed the acquisition thanks to the vast support from both inside and outside Mynavi India. I want to say thank you once again to everyone who supported us.
Awign is currently projected to make a profit of just under 3 billion Japanese yen, but it is striving to reach between 10 and 20 billion yen in three to five years, and, ultimately, 100 billion. Awign is aiming to become the number one Work Tech (HR) player in India and, by definition, Asia. I hope we can grow and create value together, and contribute to the sustainable growth of Mynavi.