Quess Becomes the 1st Indian Co. to Join Global HR Industry Body, Joins World Employment Confederation

Quess Joins World Employment Confederation as Regional Corporate Member

Quess Corp Ltd., India’s largest staffing and workforce solutions provider, has been inducted as a Regional Corporate Member of the World Employment Confederation (WEC), effective April 1, 2025. With this, Quess becomes the first Indian and South Asian staffing company to join WEC as a corporate member, a milestone that underscores India’s growing importance in the global workforce landscape.

“The World Employment Confederation represents the gold standard in global employment practices, policy frameworks, and sustainable workforce development. As the first Indian company to join WEC as a Regional Corporate Member, Quess is proud to contribute to advancing ethical labour practices, skilling, and formal employment, both in India and globally,” said Lohit Bhatia, President, Workforce Management, Quess Corp.

This announcement was made following WEC’s General Assembly on April 7, 2025, which also saw the election of new Board members and the appointment of a new Vice-President. The developments mark a continued evolution in WEC’s efforts to expand its reach across high-growth regions and further its role as the global voice of the private employment services industry.

Commenting on the development, Bettina Schaller, President of the World Employment Confederation, said, “I am delighted and honoured to welcome QUESS as our first Regional Corporate Member in the Asia-Pacific region. I had the pleasure of spending three weeks in India at the beginning of this year and witnessed firsthand what a workforce solutions powerhouse QUESS is! The company’s values and ambitions are perfectly aligned with the World Employment Confederation’s mission to showcase the economic and social role played by a well-regulated industry in enabling work, adaptation, security and prosperity in our societies. I am enthusiastic about our collaboration and confident that QUESS' contributions will extend far beyond India, benefiting workers, businesses, and governments across the APAC region and globally."

Quess brings deep on-ground impact to the WEC network, adding nearly 400,000 individuals to formal employment each year, half of whom are first-time entrants into the formal workforce. Ranked among the top five staffing companies globally by volume and 37th by value, Quess has emerged as a key driver of workforce formalization, wage equity, skilling, and social security in India.

The company’s WEC membership follows its recent signatory status with the Global Coalition for Social Justice, reinforcing its commitment to ethical recruitment, inclusive growth, and international collaboration. Through WEC, Quess will contribute to advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a particular focus on decent work, economic opportunity, and youth empowerment.

India is currently the world’s third-largest staffing market by scale and one of the fastest-growing. With over 6 million workers in formal staffing and industry revenues exceeding USD 18 billion, the sector plays a vital role in driving tax compliance, labour protections, and economic development. Quess’s inclusion into WEC creates new opportunities for cross-border learning and policy engagement, while also amplifying India’s voice in shaping the future of work.

About Quess Corp

Established in Bengaluru in 2007, Quess Corp Limited (BSE: 539978, NSE: QUESS) is India’s leading business services provider - that leverages its extensive domain knowledge and future-ready digital platforms to drive client productivity through outsourced solutions. Quess provides a host of managed outsourcing and technology-enabled services across processes such as sales and marketing, customer care, after-sales service, back office operations, staffing, manufacturing, facilities & security management, HR & F&A operations, IT & mobility services etc. Quess has a team of over 616,000 employees, serving 3000+ clients across India, North America, APAC and the Middle East as on Dec 31st, 2024.

For further details on Quess Corp Ltd., please visit: http://www.quesscorp.com

Goldman Sachs Acquires Majority Stake in PeopleStrong for $130 Mn

Goldman Sachs has acquired a majority stake in PeopleStrong, a Gurgaon-based HR software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm, for $130 million (approximately ₹1,200 crore) reported The Economic Times. The deal involved Goldman Sachs purchasing Multiples PE’s 84% stake in PeopleStrong, along with a portion of the employee stock option (Esop) pool.

This acquisition marks a significant move in the HR SaaS space, following a similar private equity buyout earlier this year when Everstone Capital acquired Wingify for around $200 million. PeopleStrong, founded by Pankaj Bansal in 2005, serves over 500 companies across India, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.

The company reported total revenues of ₹274.5 crore in FY24, slightly higher than ₹271.7 crore in FY23, and managed to turn profitable with a net profit of ₹57 crore, compared to a net loss of ₹84 crore in the previous year.

PeopleStrong’s CEO Sandeep Chaudhary expressed excitement about the partnership, highlighting Goldman Sachs’ global expertise in SaaS and AI as a key factor in driving the company’s next phase of growth.

The acquisition marks a significant development in the HR technology landscape in India.

This transaction, reported to be around a $130 million deal in some media coverage, underscores PeopleStrong’s robust market position as one of the few EBITDA-positive firms in the HR tech sphere and highlights its operational strength and growth prospects.

PeopleStrong is widely recognized for its AI-powered HCM platform that integrates key capabilities such as applicant tracking, payroll processing, employee experience management, and talent management. With over 1.5 million paychecks processed monthly and a growing client base that includes major organizations across sectors such as banking, retail, aviation, and healthcare, the company currently serves more than two million individual users.

The strategic investment is expected to fuel the next phase of PeopleStrong’s expansion—its ambition is to scale up to 10 million users globally within the next five years. This growth plan is driven by an emphasis on AI-led product innovation and deeper market penetration, both domestically and across emerging international markets like the GCC region.

For PeopleStrong, the deal with Goldman Sachs Alternatives is more than just a capital infusion—it represents a partnership that leverages Goldman Sachs’ deep expertise in SaaS and global market dynamics. According to statements by PeopleStrong’s CEO Sandeep Chaudhary, the alliance is intended to further drive operational excellence and technological innovation, ensuring that the company not only maintains its competitive edge in the HR SaaS space but also scales sustainably.

At the same time, for Goldman Sachs, this move reinforces its strategic commitment to high-growth technology sectors and the digitization of enterprise HR functions, areas that have been gaining significant traction in the global market.

Previously, a significant stake in PeopleStrong was held by Multiples PE, which had nurtured the company’s growth over the years. The transition to having Goldman Sachs Alternatives as a majority stakeholder signals confidence in PeopleStrong’s business model and its future prospects in the rapidly evolving HR tech arena. This deal also fits within a broader trend of private equity investments in SaaS companies, as investors increasingly focus on scalable, technology-driven platforms that promise both sustainability and robust returns.

Looking ahead, this acquisition sets the stage for PeopleStrong to accelerate its innovation and expand across new markets, reinforcing its position as a frontrunner in the increasingly competitive HR technology space. With the backing of a global powerhouse like Goldman Sachs, PeopleStrong is well-positioned to harness advanced AI capabilities and drive the transformation of HR practices, benefiting a diverse range of industries and clients worldwide.

Singapore-based AI Startup KarmaV Enters India - Aims to Establish Ethical Hiring Practices and Formulate Corporate DEI Strategies

KarmaV - an AI-based SaaS platform focussed on solving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) status - has announced its entry into India's burgeoning HR Tech scene. Identifying the need gap for HR automation that focuses beyond process efficiency, the company plans to tap into India's growing emphasis on implementing robust talent acquisition and retention strategies by developing inclusive and diverse workplaces.

In the last few years, India, with its advanced academic infrastructure, has emerged as one of the most promising countries for talent. Corporate India has increased its focus on developing fair and inclusive workspace policies that provide equal access, opportunities, and a sense of belonging to employees from diverse regions and demographics to work together and contribute to the organization's growth. However, despite the best efforts and millions of dollars invested into DEI initiatives, the process remained restricted to resource-intensive surveys, audits, and mentoring programs with a moderate success rate. According to a report by ADP Research Institute's People at Work, 85 percent of young workers between the ages of 18 to 24 feel a lack of diversity and inclusion policies, and 82 percent think that a gender pay gap exists and is unfair.

KarmaV is working towards solving this challenge. It provides workforce transformation solutions enabling organizations to decrease their attrition rate by 30% by addressing salary disparities, enhancing career advancement opportunities, and facilitating skill development. In addition, the platform has also worked with corporate and academic experts to run pilot projects that resulted in a 40 percent improvement in the quality and diversity of hired candidates.

Commenting on the announcement, Ujjal De, Founder & CEO of KarmaV, said: "The gap between what employees and employers expect is becoming increasingly huge, and although there has been a rise in HR technology solutions that help streamline processes, it often comes at the expense of employees' well-being. Furthermore, as India's status as a talent hub continues to expand, it becomes more critical for organizations to establish inclusive workforces that prioritize the holistic wellness of their employees. Our entrance into the market aims to solve this challenge, and we are enthusiastic about embarking on this journey."

Madhura Moulik, Co-founder and CMO of KarmaV added: "During my tenure working for large corporations and as a women entrepreneur, I have experienced several unconscious biases that could have easily been avoided with some awareness. However, the problem with an awareness program is that it does not guarantee the correct result at the right time. Hence I am a believer in the emerging technologies that will empower us to be more respectful and inclusive of people of different genders, races, ethnicities, religions, ages, cultures, and much more."

The new-age Indian workforce demands a digitalized and flexible workplace that is more transparent and unbiased. Given these developments, it has become imperative for companies of any size to implement policies and transform work culture to accommodate this shift in the context of changing social norms. KarmaV's AI monitors the nuanced changes in socioeconomic trends and continuously audits various HR functions to recommend business leaders make more affirmative decisions. The proprietary technology enables organizations to instantly identify and predict action areas, course-correct, and grow rapidly but more ethically.

About KarmaV: KarmaV is an AI-based hiring platform that helps organizations build an agile workforce and hire ethically. This AI-based SaaS platform solves HR process challenges by improving the organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) status. Also, it enables enterprises to build their employer brand, simplify & streamline the recruitment process, and measure and improve the effectiveness of the core recruiting metrics and workplace diversity goals. The startup's objective is to create a solution that shields the underlying cutting-edge technology and concentrates solely on resolving hiring challenges. The brand focuses on developing a solution that simplifies recruitment and eliminates hiring obstacles while abstracting the underlying technology for ease of use.

For more information, please visit: https://karmav.com/

GPT-3 and Speech AI powered Babblebots.ai Raises Funding from Founders of GupShup, Junglee.com, Others; Launches Voice Powered Interview Platform

Babblebots.ai, a first-of-its-kind interview platform powered by GPT-3 and Speech AI, has come out of stealth after a year of development and testing with early design partners. Battlebots' raised an undisclosed amount in pre-seed round by Rakesh Mathur (Founder/Chairman Gupshup, and Founder Junglee acq. by Amazon), and Rishi Deshpande (Founder/CTO of Chalo, acq. by Booking) and a few HNIs. The company plans to raise a seed round to continue investing in a product-led-growth model and further develop the AI/ML capabilities to deepen its technical differentiation.
Founded in 2022 by Roli Gupta and a team of IIT Bombay Computer Science graduates, Babblebots.ai is revolutionising the recruitment and talent acquisition industry with its AI-Recruiters. Under the hood, Babblebots uses state-of-the-art voice technology, and conversational intelligence using proprietary AI algorithms and GPT-3 (the technology behind ChatGPT), to interview and assess candidates for both technical and non-technical roles. The AI-Recruiters conduct near human-like interviews using Long Form Conversation voice-bots in 20+ languages and are fully customizable for job roles, questions and company branding. This reduces hours spent in scheduling, and the number of interview rounds, thus increasing the speed of hiring.

Companies traditionally conduct 3-5 interview rounds to find the ideal candidate, and report spending more than 50% of their recruiting team’s time conducting screening interviews. This is a worldwide problem, and Babblebots is eyeing the $500B recruitment market globally.

Since its beta-launch in Q3 2022, the company’s AI-Recruiters have conducted thousands of interviews for trial partners and customers. These include enterprises like Mahindra Holidays (travel), LG Soft (electronics), Great Learning (Ed-tech), Paramount TPA (insurance), public institutes like IIT Bombay, and fast-growing startups like SustLabs and Oorjan. Data from these deployments show a 10x decrease in end-to-end hiring times, from 30 days down to as few as 3, and a 500% increase in the offer-to-interview ratio from ‘1-in-10’ to ‘1-in-2’. Meanwhile, job applicants have appreciated the flexibility of talking to AI-Recruiters anytime they want, without needing to schedule an interview. Additionally, one can try out an AI-Recruiter interview on the website to understand the conversational capabilities.

Babblebots’ AI-Recruiters can evaluate communication skills (e.g. English-speaking skill, energy level) using proprietary deep-learning AI models. They can also evaluate technical skills and domain-knowledge, by processing long-form conversation itself, thus going beyond traditional multiple-choice and coding challenges. A single, convenient, 15-minute interaction results in this comprehensive assessment, as well as information about candidate preferences, such as location, compensation expectations etc. Talent acquisition teams can listen to recorded conversations, and view assessment reports and transcripts at their convenience.

In a statement about the launch and funding, Roli, Founder, Babblebots.ai said, “The technology stack of the world is finally getting an AI shot-in-the-arm with GPT-3 and other generative AI models. We will see hundreds of AI applications power end-user applications which will make human-machine interactions delightful, like we are doing with our AI-Recruiters”

Unstop Rejects the Highest Ever ₹5 Cr Shark Tank India Offer!

India is the land of enterprising businessmen who have made a name for themselves on a global scale. Gone are the days when running and owning a business was restricted to just the rich. With Shark Tank’s Season 2, Ab pura India samjhega business ki sahi value!

Millions of viewers tune in to each episode of Shark Tank India. Some are still harping on about Ashneer Grover and his rough-round-the-edges remark. While others are truly enthralled by the sheer ingenuity of some of the startups.

With every mid-sentence cut to break, the audience is at the edge of their seats. Will this pitch get an offer? Or this offer was a pass for them? The Sharks too, are playing to the ebb and flow of the show and using their wit and knowledge to share the most useful insights.

One Delhi-based startup, Unstop, saw hungry sharks circling around it with ample poking, prodding, and name-calling!

Unstop and Shark Tank: Founded by Ankit Aggrawal, Unstop is an early talent engagement and hiring platform that helps talented individuals from untapped corners of the country find their place in the job market. Through its platform, Unstop connects these individuals with the right employers and helps them build the skills and experience they need to succeed. On the other hand, employers leverage Unstop to Brand, Source, Engage, Assess, and Hire right candidates. Today, the startup has a community of 4.5 million students, freshers, and professionals with 0-5 years of experience.

As soon as Ankit Aggarwal hit the stage, the Sharks were captivated by his pitch. At one point, they had to jolt out of the trance and one of the Sharks said, “Please stop Unstop!” Some say that the secret to a Sharks’ favor is having your numbers, comms, and charisma on point, and Ankit delivered on all three!

He received an offer of ₹5 crores for 10% equity from Amit Jain. The Unstoppable Ankit was quick to decline the offer saying that it wouldn’t be fair to dilute that much equity and wanted to respect and increase the valuation at which his team was given shares, not VCs. Then we were all made aware of Ankit Aggarwal's poise, so much so that Namita Thapar ended up calling him Ankit Makhanwal! After a little back and forth, and some negotiations, Aman Gupta, Anupam Mittal, Namita Thapar, and Amit Jain finally agreed on investing ₹2 crores for 4% equity.

The bank may not be as full now but a deal that made sense for all stakeholders was finally made. As a founder, it is important that you have one eye on the bank and also a tap on the pulse of your team. Money in a business does take you a long way, but a happy team takes you much further.

Shark Tank India in its second season is ticking all the boxes and hitting all the right notes. The pitches made are nothing short of spectacular. Let's wait and watch what the entrepreneurs of India have in store for us.

HRTech Startup HROne Raises $4 Mn in Funding from Insitor Partners and Prudent Investment Managers

HROne, India's Leading HRTech SaaS Startup, has raised $4 million in a Series A round led by Insitor Partners and participation from Prudent Investment Managers. Mumbai-based investment bank Radix Capital Advisors acted as exclusive financial advisors to the company.

Founded in 2016 by Karan Jain, HROne is on a mission to use HRTech to improve the quality of professional lives of employees and help them accomplish more at their workplaces. HROne is a cloud-based HR automation platform that helps companies eliminate mundane and repetitive HR tasks. By automating 80+ processes, HROne has simplified HR operations and driven a top-notch user experience for HRs and employees.

In the HRTech market, low product adoption and poor user experience leave most organizations dissatisfied with their investments. To overcome this challenge, HROne has built a collaborative interface InboxForHRTM , that enables HRs close 125+ unique tasks in less than three clicks. The startup has seen a tremendous upsurge in product adoption and user experience with this innovation. Karan and the team are bullish on delivering more innovations to meet the emerging needs of digital workplaces.

Powered by its strong HR domain expertise and digital technologies capabilities, the startup has established a firm footing in the HRTech market. The company has successfully bootstrapped its way since inception and has scaled its revenues to 8x in a mere span of three years, catering to 900+ customers. With the fundraising, HROne will focus on building a comprehensive platform that becomes the go-to solution for every possible HR need in the modern-day workplace. Further, the company will use the funds to drive expansion into newer and existing markets. With this inflow, the company intends to 10x its revenue growth in the next three years.

Talking about the funding, Karan Jain reflects, "We are excited and supercharged with this series A funding from Insitor Partners and Prudent Investment Managers. These are exciting times for HR digital transformation globally. We aim to use this capital to grow our product capabilities, expand into newer markets, invest in our talent pool and drive a superior customer experience. We are in the hyper-growth phase in the Indian HRTech market, and we will expand into international markets in the near future. Grateful to our funding partners for recognizing the potential and backing our intent." Karan further affirms, "We thank our customers and employees who have believed in our vision and supported us in crucial times."

“HROne is leveraging technology to drive a transformational impact on the formalization of the Indian blue-collar economy. HROne, a comprehensive cloud-based HR automation platform, improves the well-being, loyalty, and productivity of the workforce in the most capital-efficient, scalable, and sustainable way while helping organizations in their productivity and efficiency improvements. Karan and his team combine world-class product capabilities with a unique understanding of HR practices in India to provide a compelling value proposition to its clients. We are incredibly excited to partner with the team to solve for inefficiencies in the livelihood space", said Nicholas Lazos of Insitor Partners, an impact investment firm.

"Companies need to make HR processes and systems less cumbersome and easy so that they can implement their organizational policies. We think HROne, with its unique interface, will help companies achieve this. Moreover, the scalability demonstrated by HROne over the last couple of years clearly indicates that it empowers companies to create a better HR environment. We were very impressed by the engagement of the HROne platform across 900+ customers. Further, it opens multiple future monetization possibilities like embedded finance, integration with insure-techs and workplace commerce players, and much more.", said Prashasta Seth of, Prudent Investment Managers.

HR-Tech Startup Hirex.ai Raises Seed Fund from SucSEED Indovation Fund and CiE IIIT-Hyderabad

Hirex.ai Co-founders

SucSEED backs an AI powered online assessment and interview platform, Hirex.ai

hirex.ai, has secured Early Capital from SucSEED Indovation Fund and CiE IIIT-Hyderabad as part of its Seed round.

With the motto of “Accelerating talent assessments with Voice AI and automation”, hirex.ai aims to build a talent assessment platform for Millennials and Gen Z job seekers who are increasingly using Voice AI solutions for every day communication needs. Hirex.ai provides a no code Voice AI platform to conduct and score level one interviews at scale autonomously.

Unlike current assessment platforms, hirex.ai allows —

1. Talent Acquisition Groups (TAG) to conduct and score technical interviews without any human intervention.
2. TAG teams can conduct level one interviews to every candidate that applies for a job within 24 hrs.
3. Job seekers can take these interviews at a time convenient to them without any interview scheduling.

Ugendreshwar Kudupudi, the Co-Founder and CEO of hirex.ai said, “Traditional resume screening using keyword searching ignores a large talent pool as qualified job seekers don't update their resume with all the necessary keywords and buzzwords. By using Voice based BOT’s these job seekers can be autonomously interviewed and scored on the skill sets the company is looking for and move them to next rounds such as coding or personal interview automatically by the bot. Job seekers can use their natural voice while answering to the bot allowing them to have realistic conversation while giving the interview.”

He further added that “The seed funding we raised from SucSEED Indovation Fund and CiE IIIT-Hyderabad will help us expand our sales ef orts to reach more customers and improve the Voice AI capabilities of the platform to suite talent assessment requirements across multiple verticals in India”.

Speaking on why they have invested Vikrant Varshney Co-Founder & Managing Partner of SucSEED Indovation Fund, said, “As per a report by Fortune Business Insights, the market size of HR Tech was USD 22.89 billion in 2020. It is projected to grow from $ 24.04 Bn in 2021 to $ 35.68 Bn in 2028 at a CAGR of 5.8% in the forecast period. Online recruitment has become a new norm as it automates Level 1 interviews for hiring and technology can dif erentiate in the new-age hybrid work culture. Hirex.ai is an AI powered online assessment and interview platform which helps recruiters conduct Level 1 (preliminary) screening of candidates without any human intervention.”

SucSEED Indovation Fund (SIF) is an AIF Cat-1 Venture Capital Angel Fund with ₹100 crore corpus and has grown out of SucSEED Angel Network (SAN) and IIITH Tech Ventures, an early-stage tech seed initiative with IIIT Hyderabad Foundation. General Partners of the Indovation Fund have 100+ years of cumulative experience within technology, fund management, and start-up ecosystem and have already invested in 60+ startups. SIF attempts to support Indian Innovation for mass needs in the following Six (6) sectors - EdTech, FinTech, Health-tech, Security & RegTech, Enterprise & MSME SaAS and Digital Economy & Emerging Tech.

About hirex.ai – 

hirex.ai is a no-code Voice AI platform to build voice-based bots that conduct and score level one technical interviews at scale. You could practically conduct 1000+ interviews in a single day without any human intervention.

hirex.ai believes solution and not features solve customer problems and hence have a comprehensive set of AI enabled tools such as,

• MCQ and Coding Interviews using AI proctoring and proxy candidate detection ● WhatsApp Chatbots for candidate engagement
• Resume parsing, indexing and search
• Interview reminder via bot-based phone calls
• Integrated to email providers like Outlook and Gmail
• Chrome plugin support for Job-boards and LinkedIn resume parsing
• RESTful API for HCM and HMS integration
• Agile ATS with automation support
• Staffing Vendor Management and many more
• Giving you a complete AI-enabled recruitment suite under a single dashboard.

Problem(s) that hirex.ai is addressing:

1. 70% of the job-seekers who apply for a job don't get interviewed and are ignored without proper screening.
2. Keyword based search dont give desired results if the resumes are not updated properly 3. Talent Acquisition Groups (TAG) don't have enough resources to conduct level one interviews at scale and hence use keywords based search as a selection criteria, which is ineffective.

Solution:

• Using Voice AI, TAG teams can now build Voice based bots and deploy them at scale based on requirements. Every job seeker in the funnel can give an interview with the Voice BOT within 24 hours of applying for a job without scheduling.
• TAG teams also get individual interview scores automatically done by the BOT and move them to appropriate rounds for follow-on interviews using our inbuilt ATS automatically.
• hirex.ai also provides coding, MCQ, assignments and remote interviews support in a single platform allowing TAG teams to have the 360 degree assessment and feedback of each candidate in one place.
• Job seekers are continuously updated using WhatsApp or email about their application status whenever they apply for a job and attend interviews on the platform without human intervention.

Founder’s Details –

Ugendreshwar Kudupudi (Co-founder & CEO) is a serial entrepreneur with over 20+ years of experience in pan-asia sales, technical marketing and product development. Worked in various startups and MNCs with over USD 100 million in sales revenue, generated from various semiconductor and critical networking solutions for OEM customers across Asia.

Sayyad Nayyaroddeen (Co-founder & CTO) is a IIIT-Hyderabad alum and worked in various startups in the FinTech and WorkTech domains. Has also filed for a patent in 2020 titled “A SYSTEM AND METHOD OF VOICE BASED INTERVIEW EVALUATION".

HR Tech Platform InstaHyre Continues to Move on an Exponential Growth Trajectory

Trusted hiring partner for more than 30 million job seekers and 10,000+ companies, the HR Tech platform has enjoyed a solid year of business growth in 2021 and is expecting continued growth in the current year as well.

Instahyre - an advanced AI-based hiring platform, has recently announced strong fiscal, customer and internal growth for FY21 as well as upcoming strategies for expanding business in 2022. The AI-powered hiring platform has grown 4x in the last year, witnessing most of its growth within the last 6-7 months attributable to the launch of its innovative hiring technologies and subsequent boost in sales.

Instahyre has recorded a solid year of business growth in FY21 that included a 4.2X increase in the revenue accompanied by an increase of staff to over 3X. Additionally, the company also witnessed a 380% increase in the number of job seekers on the platform. Instahyre’s SaaS product offering has also contributed to the addition of 30 million candidates and over 7000 companies ranging from enterprises to high-growth startups and unicorns.

In addition to the upgradation to the SaaS product, the company has added new technologies to its portfolio, including Instahyre Drives, which claims to handpick the best candidates for mass hiring using AI instantly. The new product technology has garnered traction from companies like Amazon, Walmart, Google and 800 of the world’s largest companies, unicorns and high-growth startups.

Sarbojit Mallick

“We are extremely happy with our 2021 results from product, revenue and operations perspective. Owing to these successes, we are very well positioned for expansive growth of the team, customers and company. The team size has increased and we are strengthening our departments with senior hires as we look to launch globally. We will be focussing on expanding in the IT services segment, where we have received overwhelming response. For geographical expansion we are looking to foray into US talent markets as many US companies and startups already use Instahyre for their Indian offices,” commented Sarbojit Mallick, Co-founder & CBO of Instahyre.

A major initiative Instahyre has undertaken for the current year is to build a unified platform for recruitment with automation with 10-12x more candidate engagement than any of the available solutions in the market. The AI-powered hiring platform uses technology to understand a candidate’s personality and employer DNA to match them. Additionally, the company processes millions of data points to understand intent and behaviour from both the supply and demand points of view.

The new products from Instahyre will help integrate all the hiring segments, from sending the first email to the offer email. The platform helps with 50-80% of all the hiring needs of its clients with intelligent inputs from Instamatch for building a high-performance talent pipeline. Additionally, it has saved 72% of the hiring costs of its clients by using technology extensively to automate manual tasks, reminders, etc., for faster closure, reducing time-to-hire and lowering the cost-per-hire.

Founded in 2016, Instahyre is an advanced hiring platform that leverages artificial intelligence to enable recruiters to hire top talent effortlessly. The AI-powered hiring platform condenses hours’ worth of manual efforts such as applying filters to search for suitable candidates, checking if they are interested etc., by providing recruiters with a curated list of candidates ready for hire. In addition, the AI-led hiring enables recruiters to spend more time perfecting candidate experience, while Instahyre does the heavy lifting of providing quality profiles.

HR Tech Startup InterviewDesk Raises Seed Funding from Sugumar Natarajan and Ex Amazon Execs

On Demand Interviewer Platform InterviewDesk, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by Sugumar Natarajan, Executive Director, Anil Foods and angel investors including the former Amazon leader Lakshminarayanan Venkatajalam, Former Amazon Recruiting Leader Karthick Chandran, reported People Matters, an online magazine for HR Leaders.

The HR Tech startup closed the funding couple of weeks back, said the People Matters' report, and the startup plans to use the raised funds in strengthening the engineering and business teams to build the tech that empowers the platform, the company announced.

InterviewDesk is an interview-as-a-service platform solving tech-hiring across the globe to help companies build their engineering team faster. With its platform organizations can now save up to 50% of time and cost spent on hiring, mentions the InterviewDesk website.

Founded in 2018, by former senior recruiter at Amazon, Pichumani Durairaj, InterviewDesk is built to disrupt traditional hiring methods and works on a unique concept of outsourced interviewing.

InterviewDesk has seen a growth of 400% year-on-year, in FY-2022/, said the report citing the company statement. Its clients include companies such as Ally, Byjus, Rupeek, Jupiter Money, Glossier, Coin Switch Kuber and Jubilant FoodWorks.

Headquartered in Chennai, InterviewDesk's one of the offerings includes offer pre-assessed candidates to organizations, wherein organizations can leverage on ready to be hired bunch of candidates anytime. It also offers anonymous technical mock interviews with engineers from MAANG and other top companies.

The clientele of InterviewDesk include companies such as Ally, Byjus, Rupeek, Jupiter Money, Glossier, Coin Switch Kuber and Jubilant FoodWorks.

10 Impressive HR Tech Startups That're Boosting Organizational Performance Through Their Tech-enabled Solutions

A new generation of HR tech startups is giving employers a competitive edge in the fight to attract and keep top talent. HR is by definition a people’s profession, and people are what make businesses go. Despite this, this very human, personal industry appears completely at ease with digital transformation.

The Human Resource solutions industry is undergoing constant change. Technological advancements are constantly taking place in the HR tech space. Technology-based solutions used by the HR industry are expected to lessen some of the stress on HR professionals, who historically work long hours and go unnoticed for all they do in the office. Operations will be streamlined by technology in the upcoming years, and businesses will have higher employee satisfaction as a result.

In sync with these technological changes taking place, the below is the list of ten HR Tech companies and startups that are dynamically working towards achieving efficient HR workflows using emerging technologies like AI, Machine Learning and NPU among others

Bridgentech

Bridgentech is a boutique Contract to Hire Staffing and Solutions provider. Bridgentech has been offering solutions to the IT industry, backed by capable and skilled candidates who can deliver since 2018. However, they realized that even though there are strong demand and supply forces in the industry, the “right-fit” or “trust-based-hiring” is still evolving & there’s a lot it takes to make that bond happen. So they started looking beyond Job Descriptions and Resumes.

They serve businesses with talented IT professionals through focused and differentiated recruitment processes, Skill-enhancing in-house training, inter-cultural gap bridging, incubation, and international migration support, blended into one-offering tailored to the client.

Bridgentech sources top-of-the-line IT operations engineers in the space of cloud, DevOps, and ContainerOps so that one can deliver the application across any platform with unprecedented agility, precision, and care. They find resources who can help with data consolidation, warehousing, intelligence, etc and assimilating it with scalable modern architectures and applications, thus maximizing its value.

NWORX

NWORX is a B2B SaaS platform used by professional development service providers or directly by enterprises across India, Europe, and Africa to improve the performance of leaders and professionals. NWORX offers engaging and effective leadership and professional development that is completely embedded in the flow of everyday work of a professional. The company aims to be the category leader in leadership and professional development addressing business challenges across growth, transformation and future-readiness of the workforce.

The services automated by the NWORX platform democratize professional development, managing human ROI in business terms.

Belong

Belong is the first predictive outbound hiring solution in the world. The brand's data-driven hiring solution assists growing businesses in identifying and engaging with candidates who best fit their requirements and are most likely to move. Vijay Sharma, a BITS Pilani alumnus, founded the brand in 2014, offering reduced hiring time, automated and personalized outreach, efficient applicant tracking, effective talent engagement, and integrating talent DNA to acquire and retain the best matches. 

The brand's Ml algorithms have enabled businesses to find and target high-fit talent, engage candidates with personalized engagements, and accelerate recruiting cycles at scale.

Mettl

Ketan Kapoor and Tonmoy Shingal founded Mettl, a Gurugram-based HR technology startup, in 2009 with the goal of leveraging technology for hiring practices in Indian and global enterprises. This technology company provides recruitment assessments, programming tests, psychometric tests, aptitude tests, a pre-built test library of over 200 tests, an interview app, vocational skills assessment, remote proctoring, performance analytics, and a certification platform. The company has a presence in 100 countries and serves over 1,800 clients worldwide.

iXceed Solutions

A Talent and Workforce Solutions services company, iXceed is a service provider to Fortune 500 companies and primarily focuses on these domains globally: Technology, IT consulting and Engineering Consulting.

The company uses Artificial Intelligence-based recruitment solutions to create an in-class experience for both clients and candidates. Some of their clients are- Infosys, HCL, Oracle, Mindtree, NIIT, etc. It is co-founded by Yogita Tulsian, who is also its Director.

InCruiter

Established in 2018, InCruiter is an online recruitment platform based on SAAS in the B2B space. InCruiter provides an Online Recruitment Marketplace for recruitment agencies and independent recruiters to speedup hiring process by 10x. 

The platform connects specialized recruiters with the best track records to the matching jobs. Multiple agencies working on a single job with a single point of contact makes hiring fast and efficient. This in turn enables employers for more accurately hiring with cost and time savings. InCruiter helps in finding you the best candidates in the shortest time without any hassle of phone calls, emails, invoices, and agreements from multiple vendors.

FlexC 

FlexC is an AI-driven talent marketplace for organisations to hire and manage their Hybrid Workforce. It acts as an uber for recruitment for its 150+ clients through its 200+ agency and 25K+ professional network.

FlexC offers an integrated SaaS platform to engage with agencies, hire talent (full time, contractual and remote), create milestones, pay invoices, all at one platform. The company also offers monitoring support to track the performance of the hybrid employees. Managers can track real-time productivity through an interactive dashboard and download performance reports.

Keka 

Keka is an HR automation software with the mission of solving complex HR challenges. It is essentially an HRMS and Payroll software provider. A SaaS employee experience platform, Keka combines HR, payroll, ATS and performance management in a single suite of tools. It simplifies common tasks and allows organizations to seamlessly manage human resources processes.

Unlike the traditional HR systems, Keka focused on solving complex HR problems in a simple and intuitive way. The product enables organizations to manage their HR processes from hire to retire while ensuring an awesome user experience for the employees. 

Quandle

Qandle is all-in-one cloud-based HR Solution startup focused on redesigning the HR software from the employees’ perspective. Quandle has launched various solutions to address different facets of the HR department in organizations across all sectors, including - Remote Work Toolkit, Touchless Attendance, Qanbot (HR tasks chatbot), PeoplePro (Free community for HR professionals) etc.

Last year in April, Quandle launched an AI-powered HR chatbot called ‘Qanbot’ that helps automate daily HR tasks of employees and automate and address the day-to-day general queries of employees on behalf of the HR department. Later in October, Quandle launched the beta version of EasyBoard, an AI enabled onboarding chatbot, to make new hire onboarding a seamless experience for the candidates and corporations, both. 

Moveworks

Moveworks is the first employee experience platform that uses conversational AI to solve issues and prevent problems at work. It automatically resolves requests, communicates changes, and shows the team what to fix next. The platform automatically resolves employees’ HR requests, including benefits inquiries, PTO applications, payroll questions, and more.

Moveworks' conversational AI is fluent in nine languages. The company claims that its AI platform gives employees support in seconds, just by asking for what they need, and enables leaders to prevent problems in advance.  Among its clientele, Moveworks counts companies like Hearst, DocuSign, and Broadcom among others.

5 Ways in Which Technology Has Improved Background Verification

Article Authored by Piyush Peshwani Co-Founder & CEO OnGrid

The new decade has been witnessing a plethora of technological advancements irrespective of the industry, geography, or type of workforce. The unprecedented pandemic, although traumatic to millions of families across the globe, has only accelerated technological headway.

Every little thing around our daily life has a technological foundation, as simple as ordering groceries, getting a cab, or even reading this blog! There is hardly or no exception.

This reality is not oblivious to the HR Tech or Background verification spectrum. Everything in its life cycle has gotten some kind of technological makeover, be it onboarding, KT sessions, grievance management, and even the fun Friday activities!

In this article, we will be talking about the 5 most interesting ways in which technology has revolutionized the background verification world.

1. Automation

If we dial back just to 2015, any first day would just be reserved for PAPER WORKS! The frustrating experience would require the new joiner to submit multiple different sets of the same document (Signed!), and one minor error would repeat the shenanigans all over again.

Well, coming back to the year 2022, the above is not the case anymore. Any required document would be collected and signed off virtually through the in-house organizational platform or third-party background verification platforms that can be readily integrated with any onboarding platform to further smoothen the process of collection and verification of documents. Be it for the HR teams, admin teams, or compliance purposes.

Thanks to the constant advancements, new joiners can actually spend time getting to know their colleagues on the first day.

2. Access to repositories

Gone are the days when processes such as validating ID, identifying international criminal cases were a herculean task or when a simple criminal record verification would require the candidate to run down to the police stations multiple times to get a clearance certificate, sometimes even obligating the HR teams to omit the criminal checks to escape the hassle of dealing with the legal system.

Thanks to the digitized repositories, verifications that would take weeks (if not months) can be completed in just a few clicks. They are characterized in a way that enhances the quality of checks with their state-of-the-art integration with national and international repositories.

Verifications such as criminal record checks, global database checks, ID verifications, and employment verification are all completed in record time thanks to the robust integrations with respective repositories.

Through repositories, employment and educational verifications can be completed more quickly and authentically.

3. Lesser TAT

One of the most thankful but still underestimated aspects of technology-backed BGV is the reduced completion time. If we again dial back to the year 2015, the accepted norm for verification completion was in months, which would heavily impact the overall recruitment lead time, thus the entire HR lifecycle.

One of the HR leaders associated with the background verification organization quoted “The impact of attrition was so high on the HR life cycle then, that if there was a ‘great attrition’ then it would be chaotic”

With technological advancements in the BGV domain the verification turnaround time (TAT) has come down significantly; an audit-ready preliminary verification report would be ready in less than 4 hrs. A detailed complete report would not take more than 6-7 working days.

4. Innovation in verifications

When the world as we know was thrown off guard with waves of the deadly pandemic, innovation became inevitable to upgrade the current verifications. Address verification which was popularly executed through physical and postal mode got a digital makeover as digital address verification, backed with strong OCR technology. With innovations like these, you can shield your business, employees, and customers by providing another layer of personal protection. It's just the tip of the iceberg as innovation is a continuous and ever-evolving process, to say the least.

5. Data security

With the advent of technology and the very famous “Data is the new oil” quote, every piece of information about an individual is crucial and needs to be handled with the utmost amount of respect. The individual’s privacy should be regarded with the highest sanctimony by the organizations.

Modern BGV platforms have robust systems in place where sensitive information is secured through encryption. With additional qualifications such as ISO and GDPR compliance, security concerns are handled.

Trust establishment is easier said than done. Without trust, the foundation of any professional environment will remain weak.

Moveworks Introduces First AI Solution that Provides Personalized HR Support

Introducing Moveworks for HR: The first AI solution that provides personalized HR support

Employees can automatically resolve workplace requests through simple conversations with Moveworks — freeing up HR teams to focus on the projects that matter most

Moveworks, the AI platform that powers the best places to work, today introduced Moveworks for HR: a sophisticated artificial intelligence solution built for human resources. The platform now automatically resolves employees’ HR requests, including benefits inquiries, PTO applications, payroll questions, and more.

The shift to flexible work has created enormous challenges for HR teams, since employees expect to stay productive, informed, and fulfilled from anywhere in the world. These employees overwhelm HR with thousands of requests, at all hours of the day, and they continue to quit at a record rate as their companies struggle to support them. Moveworks for HR solves these challenges at scale — with AI that provides instant, personalized help to every employee based on their unique role, department, seniority, benefits, location, and language.

“Moveworks is the core of our digital workplace, since it lets employees access support for the broader tech stack with a single search,” said Steve Phillpott, CIO and CDO at Solidigm. “Our job is about using technology to empower and improve the employee experience — whether they need IT support or HR help or more. That’s what we’ve achieved with Moveworks.”

Moveworks for HR is an out-of-the-box solution that requires no added work for HR teams. It plugs into a company’s preferred communications platform — Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a company portal, for instance — and automatically responds to each unique request with a personalized response. To provide the best possible answer, Moveworks’ machine learning models automatically ingest, scan, standardize, annotate, and conversationalize every knowledge article, form, FAQ page, and user record across an enterprise.

With this new release, HR teams can:

• Resolve common employee requests automatically: Employees can check remaining PTO balances, inquire about benefits, payroll, company holiday schedules, human resources information system (HRIS) questions, and more.
• Accelerate resolution time for complex issues: Employees go to a single place for PTO approvals, life event changes, employee verification letter requests, and more. Moveworks routes the request to the appropriate person for approvals and recommends the best action for the employee and the approver.
• Dramatically increase ROI for existing HR systems: Employees no longer have to ask their HR team to access information buried within HR systems and disparate knowledge bases. By connecting Moveworks to these existing systems, such as ServiceNow, Jira, Workday, SharePoint, Simpplr, Guru, and Confluence, among others, the platform can deliver the best possible solution in a single message.

"HR teams are responsible for every aspect of the employee experience, from onboarding new hires to handling major life events,” said Moveworks, CEO, Bhavin Shah. “This has become a near-impossible job in our complex digital world — further complicated by the fact that employees now expect instant support while working from anywhere and everywhere. HR teams need the help of sophisticated AI to overcome their organization’s biggest challenges, while still ensuring employees get the personalized HR support they need.”

Bhavin Shah

 
Moveworks for HR uses hundreds of machine learning models to decide the best possible response or action for each specific user, considering their location, language preference, security permissions, and a variety of other factors. Employees simply ask for what they need, however they want, in whatever language they desire.

“We support over 1,000 team members across the globe with different needs and circumstances,” said Lainey Dailo, HR Operations Manager at Solidigm. “Moveworks navigates this complexity for us, which means our people get the personal touch they expect from HR, but without having to wait. To create an incredible employee experience, you need the combination of HR and AI.”

Moveworks for HR is a critical addition to the Moveworks platform. Moveworks customers already had the ability to answer questions across any line of business, send interactive comms at scale, and get insights across the entire digital business. With the addition of Moveworks for HR, businesses can resolve HR issues automatically — without the need for manual intervention.

To schedule a demo of Moveworks for HR, visit: https://www.moveworks.com/request-demo

About Moveworks

Moveworks is the AI platform that powers the best places to work.

Today, employees deal with endless distractions: they wait days to get IT support, search through dozens of systems to find the new HR policy, and don’t learn about critical changes until it’s too late. Moveworks lets them focus on what really matters. Our AI platform gives employees support in seconds, just by asking for what they need, and enables leaders to prevent problems in advance. With Moveworks, companies like Hearst, DocuSign, and Broadcom make work magic.

For more information, visit: Moveworks.com

Fynehand to Invest Over $ 1 Mn in AI Talent Marketplace, FlexC

Left to Right - Siddharth Raisurana, Founder and Managing Director of FyneHand & Girish Kukreja, Founder and CEO, of FlexC &

The funds will be used to expand the business.

FlexC, an AI Talent Marketplace today, announced that it has raised funds from Fynehand in Pre-Series Funding round. Fynehand will be investing over USD $ 1 million in AI talent marketplace. Siddharth Raisurana from Fynehand has come on board. He is the former COO of ABC Consultants and currently is the Founder and Managing Director of FyneHand.

The company will be using the funds to accelerate the business horizons, for the expansion

of agency network and industry verticals beyond IT and BPO like Consumer Tech, BFSI and Retail. It also intends to invest in technology platforms to give a better user experience to its clients and Integrate various services including offline video interviews, assessments, BGV etc to create a complete ecosystem.

FlexC is an AI-driven talent marketplace for organisations to hire and manage their Hybrid Workforce. It acts as an uber for recruitment for its 150+ clients through its 200+ agency and 25K+ professional network.

Speaking on the development, Siddharth Raisurana, Founder and Managing Director of FyneHand, said, “Future of Human Capital is all about Hybrid Workplace and Hybrid Workforce. With FyneHand’s vision of - All Things Human Capital and FlexC's vision of a platform for People- Skill-Solutions, this creates great synergy and partnership to approach the market addressing the future of human capital which includes permanent and gig workforce.”

Girish Kukreja, Founder and CEO, of FlexC, said, “This is an important milestone in FlexC journey to become India's best talent marketplace. This partnership brings in great domain expertise, complementary offerings to take our platform to large corporates and expand our offerings into new verticals. Looking forward to achieving bigger and better milestones together.

FlexC offers an integrated SaaS platform to engage with agencies, hire talent (full time, contractual and remote), create milestones, pay invoices, all at one platform. The company also offers monitoring support to track the performance of the hybrid employees. Managers can track real-time productivity through an interactive dashboard and download performance reports.

Employee Growth Enablement Platform Courseplay Raises INR 3 Crore in Seed Round Led by Inflection Point Ventures

• Courseplay is a SaaS-based scalable employee experience solution for enterprises which provides clients with automated training workflows and intelligent recommendations for better employee performance.
• Funds raised to be used for customer acquisition and bringing new AI-powered capabilities as Courseplay plans to scale its presence across India, Southeast Asia and Middle East
• IPV has so far invested Rs. 326 Cr across 107 deals.

Employee growth enablement platform Courseplay raises INR 3 CR in a Seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The funds raised will be used to focus on customer acquisition and bringing new AI-powered capabilities to market. The company will continue to expand operations across India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

Courseplay brings to the table end-to-end solutions in training delivery, employee engagement, workflow automation and impact measurement. In 2020, the startup engaged almost 400,000 employees across India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. With over 100,000+ activities in the form of e-learning titles, behavioural scorecards, coaching evaluations, performance management, assessments and more, the breadth and depth of services is one of the reasons that makes Courseplay a clear choice for industry-leading companies.

Arjun Gupta, Founder & CEO, Courseplay

Vinay Bansal, Founder & CEO, Inflection Point Ventures says, “Upskilling employees and improving workforce performance through regular staff training programmes has always been a must for companies across sectors. However, training employees offline is an expensive affair as it needs to fulfil multiple criteria including upgrade in training programmes, location, availability of trainers and employees and more. Courseplay provides the most cost effective and scalable online learning technology solution which not only aims to provide a holistic learning experience at your convenience, but also tracks the performance of each employee along with needed recommendation and area of improvement, thus ensuring a high success rate of the training programmes. This online training programme has been the need of an hour especially with the world going digital due to COVID. Courseplay has some renowned brands which itself speaks volume of the brands end-to-end solution. We look forward to being a part of Courseplay’s next phase in their growth journey.”

Arjun Gupta, Founder CEO, Courseplay graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a degree in Economics and International Relations and is committed to the idea and understands customer behaviour and market gaps very well. They work with some of the leading companies across Automotive, Aviation, IT, Healthcare, Retail, Finance and Tech. Some of its prominent clientele include Amazon, SpiceJet, Emami, Swiggy, etc. Courseplay’s entire technology infrastructure is completely hosted on the cloud and leverages a number of services by AWS and Google for regular operations of the platform as well as build and deploy unique and innovative features.

Courseplay captures multiple dimensions of data to provide accurate employee growth recommendations to teams using their web application, chatbot, and Android and iOS mobile apps. Courseplay can capture an employee’s entire experience on the platform, which includes their performance, behaviours, coaching and more. Using this data, they can provide clients with exact recommendations for training, career growth opportunities, and mentorship. Employees get a holistic experience so they may be better connected with their company and get better visibility into their career path.

Arjun Gupta, Founder & CEO, Courseplay says, “Courseplay is changing the way employers look at enabling their teams for professional and personal development. Skill development alone is not going to cut it in this day and age, employers need to look at the growth and experience of their employees in the company. The last year has been special for us at Courseplay, and we are looking forward to commencing our next stage of growth. We are ready to capitalise on the wave of digital transformation and accelerate our expansion plans across emerging markets like India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.”

The corporate learning and talent development market is a $450 billion market worldwide. Employee experience is one of the fastest growing segments in the enterprise SaaS sector and Courseplay is in prime position to take advantage of the staggering growth of this market over the next few years. They estimate that the market will grow at the rate of 20 to 25% YoY for the next 3 years given the recent push for digital transformation by companies in the region.

About Courseplay

Courseplay is an AI-powered employee experience platform (EXP) working with some of the leading companies in the world, founded by Arjun Gupta and launched in January 2016. Courseplay allows enterprises to train employees, track their growth, and measure the impact of their activities all in one place.

About Inflection Point Ventures

Inflection Point Ventures is an angel investing platform with over 6000 CXOs, HNIs and Professionals to together invest in startups. The firm supports new-age entrepreneurs by providing them monetary & experiential capital and connecting them with a diverse group of investors.

HR Tech Space Leader Keka Raised $1.6 Mn Non-dilutive Revenue Funding

Keka HR, the market leading HR tech platform for SME businesses in India, raised $1.6MN non-dilutive growth capital through Recur Club

The SME HR Tech space leader Keka is making waves after raising $1.6 million non-dilutive revenue funding. The feat was achieved through trading subscriptions made on Recur Club, which enables companies to access capital growth.

Through this, Keka leads the Indian companies in paving the pathway to use non-dilutive funding for scaling its business, the company said. With 4750+ customers in India, Keka aims to take its expertise to the other countries in 2022 with a major global expansion.

Though revenue-based funding was a known phenomenon, Keka has become the pioneer in driving attention towards it for other SaaS companies to utilize its advantage. Revenue funding allows businesses to scale without having to depend on venture capitalists and giving away part of company ownership.

The revenue generated from Recur Club is going to be invested in Marketing, Sales and the further growth possibilities of Keka in the world. This heralds a new Era of frugal and sustainable growth in the midst of 6 month olds becoming Unicorns through accessible funding.

Keka, an HR automation software, started in 2015 with the mission of solving complex HR challenges. It earned accolades for thriving despite being a bootstrapped company. The company looks forward to be the torch bearer for all bootstrapped startups with this new age financing.

Speaking about the funding and its utilization, Vijay Yalamanchili, CEO of Keka mentions, "Non-dilutive funding will become the norm for bootstrapped SaaS companies in the world. SaaS founders should focus on building Awesome experiences and not run after investment rounds, which often cuts their ownership margin and control of the company. The raised funding will be invested in hiring and expanding the company further across geographies. We intend to hire 200-300 more employees in the next financial year and this funding will be utilized to make the hiring season successful.”

Keka has openings in almost every department as it aims to grow the employee count to support the company in its next leg of growth. With its head office in Hyderabad, India, the company aims to make its presence felt across the globe and cater to the SME industry in the US too along with the Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern nations.d;’

As for Recur Club, it is the leader in India when it comes to revenue financing. Bootstrapped startups can get access to a significant amount of capital to supercharge their journey before they turn to Venture Capitalists’ money.

Recur Club is Asia’s first and only trading platform for companies with recurring revenue streams that gives access to growth capital at the click of a button. It connects companies directly with institutional investors to trade their subscriptions for upfront cash - it’s like your monthly or quarterly customers just paid you upfront instantly. Recur Club partners with companies by unlocking fast, flexible, transparent, and non-dilutive capital at every stage of their journey and provides an ecosystem to amplify their growth.

AI-powered Talent Marketplace FlexC Revamps Website, Offers All Hiring Solutions Under One Roof

The revamp will cater to the evolving needs of the industry with respect to talent acquisition

FlexC, an AI-Powered Talent Marketplace has recently revamped its website, making the user’s experience customizable and 3X efficient. The revamp has been made keeping in mind the evolving needs of the industry with respect to talent acquisition.

Their upgraded advanced technology ensures to impart information based on user- clear CTA- Call to Actions. In their renovated website, the work tech start-up has launched three avatars representing- Organisations, Professionals and HR Agencies. All the user has to do is click on a specific avatar, and their technology will ensure that the user receives an end-to-end customised browsing experience.

The website targets professionals looking for jobs, and companies looking for better resources to manage their hiring process. It's AI algorithms with Integrated Data Science and Machine Learning Engine provides data-driven insights to help companies find a perfect match every time they post a requirement for talent. It has curated resources to help HRs renovate their workforce from traditional to hybrid. Their seamless onboarding and management process will facilitate organisations transition faster towards the future of work. Organisations can browse relevant talent, HR agencies and individuals can browse available projects, even without signing up.

Speaking on the development, Girish Kukreja, Founder and CEO, FlexC said, “The objective behind the revamp of the website is to have our complete solutions simplified, alluded clearly and ensure the contextualised experience for our stakeholders. We want our platform’s AI capabilities to be used by organisations, professionals and HR agencies to save efforts, get better results and hence reduce the cycle time by at least 50%.”

FlexC offers a family of tools curated to upgrade your business performance. The platform has done diversification into four models-

FlexC Hire: Hire permanent employees for your workforce through FlexC’s AI- recommended profiles and through our recruiter network. Shortlist professionals, conduct interviews and onboard candidates seamlessly.

FlexC Contract: Onboard and manage the complete employment cycle of your contractors in a single streamlined flow.

FlexC Freelance: Access to finest professionals across 400+ skills and automate your complete process- from onboarding to final payments.

FlexC Force: An integrated SaaS platform curated for talent acquisition and management. Avoid time taking implementation cycles and customise FlexC as per your brand requirements.

AI Talent Marketplace FlexC Appoints Anantha Krishnan as Chief Talent Solutions Officer

Anantha Krishnan

In his two decades of career, Anantha has worked with companies like LTI, Samsung, and Deccanet.

FlexC, an AI-Powered Talent Marketplace has appointed Anantha Krishnan as its new Chief Talent Solutions officer. Previously, Ananth was associated with Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI) as an Associate Director, where he was leading the people supply chain (PSC) with various business and technology units.

At FlexC, he will be looking after talent solutions and end-to-end mobilising of resources. Anantha has more than two decades of rich and versatile experience in operating talent solutions. He has worked with companies like Samsung and Deccanet. During his stint in LTI, Anantha also took up the additional role of Revenue Partner for Consumer, Media & Entertainment and Technology vertical and contributed to the unit’s revenue growth of threefold in the short span of 3.5 years.

Before this, he led the product of Integrated Automated Test Engine for Samsung’s Soft switch lab and launched the verification utility for SKT (South Korea Telecom) network. Anantha had served multiple proprietary product engineering roles at Samsung Electronics.

In his long-spanning career, he also played the crucial role of Defect Analyst and led the Vendor Management team for Google and Ericsson platform for Sony Ericsson Mobile Communication in Japan. He defined the global defect tracking process, which reduced the time by 48 hrs to prioritize and fix the bug.

Speaking on the appointment, Anantha Krishnan, Chief Talent Solution Officer, FlexC, said, “I am excited to be part of the core team at FlexC. The start-up has built an AI-Driven Talent Marketplace that allows companies to access, engage and manage hybrid workforce efficiently, at a fractional cost from anywhere in the world. I am thrilled to be a part of the organisation and look forward to disrupting the talent marketplace in India.

Commenting on the new leadership, Girsh Kukreja, Founder and CEO, FlexC, said, “Anantha’s People Supply Chain prowess, Talent Solutions experience, product engineering background and operating at scale will accelerate FlexC’s talent supply and process to be client's partner of choice. Going further, the talent fulfilment quality and expanding Recruiters network will continue to fortify FlexC’s ability to capitalize on the remarkable market opportunity right up-front”.

Qandle Launches Beta Version of Easyboard, AI Onboarding Chatbot

Qandle –an HRMS startup has launched the beta version of EasyBoard, an AI enabled onboarding chatbot, to make new hire onboarding a seamless experience for the candidates and corporations, both.

The brand has been launching technologically advanced HR tech solutions to support organizations in the new normal. In the last one year itself, the brand has launched various solutions to address different facets of the HR department in organizations across all sectors, including - Remote Work Toolkit, Touchless Attendance, Qanbot (HR tasks chatbot), PeoplePro (Free community for HR professionals) etc.

The new solution EasyBoard shall enable faster onboarding of employees and will include auto verification of employees’ bank accounts and ID proofs and address proofs like PAN card, Aadhar card etc. which new hires will be able to upload in a click. The backend AI allows the solution to read all the documents and fill in details automatically, and even verify them. It doesn’t even require the new hires to download an app, and all of these can be achieved simply through a web browser which can work on a desktop as well as on any smartphone.

“One can imagine that when a fast growing organization is hiring people in bulk, it becomes extremely difficult to manage all the data and documents, and verify each. In addition, it results in a lot of time wastage for the new hires. Now, it is even more challenging when many organizations have gone remote. We built this when some of our clients reached out to us and explained the problems they were facing with respect to providing an awesome experience to their new hires, while ensuring all the onboarding compliances are met. We aim to impact over 500 clients with the new offering in the next few months,” said Mr. Himanshu Aggarwal, Co-founder and CTO, Qandle.

Due to the new work-from-home culture, it has become even more challenging to verify and onboard new hires. Easyboard by Qandle takes care of all the manual admin work of onboarding and guides the hires through the entire process, verification, management etc. in the form of an interactive chatbot. The solution will not just save time, but also take everything online, cutting on carbon footprints, and is available in multiple languages.

Currently, the beta version is out which is available to 5 Qandle customers, while the final version is expected to be available within the next three weeks.

About Qandle

Qandle, an All-In-One HR tech Platform, launched in 2018, is a young start-up focused on redesigning the HR software from the employees’ perspective. Founded by Chayan Mukhopadhyay (CO-Founder and CEO) and Himanshu Aggarwal (CO-Founder and CTO), Qandle distinguishes itself as a comprehensive solution that covers the entire gamut of HR activities – from hire to retire. Qandle is a modular and extremely configurable solution for HRs looking to deliver the next-generation experience to their employees. Qandle serves over 550 clients spread across 30+ countries.

HackerEarth Partners with Lever to Boost Speed and Efficiency of Tech Hiring Process

Integration with leading Applicant Tracking System will further streamline and optimize the hiring process for tech recruiters and hiring managers

India, Bangalore - August 05, 2021 - HackerEarth, a leading solutions provider for remote developer assessments, interviews, and upskilling, today announced its newest of many Applicant Tracking System (ATS) integrations with Lever, a leading Talent Acquisition Suite. As a part of HackerEarth’s network of ATS integrations, existing Lever users will be able to easily access and optimize use of HackerEarth Assessments.

HackerEarth’s integration with Lever allows recruiters to manage the applicant screening workflow faster and more efficiently. The key benefits of the integration for users include:

• Lever users can directly send HackerEarth Assessments invites to their candidates at various stages of the job hiring lifecycle. Once the candidate completes the assessment, their score, and a report containing performance data are linked back into Lever.
• Lever users can eliminate the constant shifting between LeverTRM and HackerEarth’s platform and view all hiring data from one dashboard. Recruiters can screen candidates faster using HackerEarth, while all members of the hiring team can stay abreast of the progress, by viewing it on the Lever Dashboard.
• Hiring managers have all candidate information easily accessible on demand, and recruiters can provide candidates with real-time feedback.
• Lever users have the option to send more than one assessment to evaluate a particular candidate. If the recruiter or hiring manager chooses to retest the candidate (on a different level of assessment or skill set), the integration allows that.

"With demand for skilled tech talent higher than ever, the ability to recruit and hire quickly and efficiently is actually a competitive advantage today, said Sachin Gupta, CEO of HackerEarth. “Today’s users of enterprise software want solutions that integrate seamlessly with others in their tech stack and this partnership with Lever will empower recruiters and hiring managers to save time and leverage data in ways that provide a better experience both for their companies and candidates.”

Lever users can read more about the HackerEarth integration in the Lever Marketplace: https://leverpartner.com/integrations/hackerearth.

Discover more HackerEarth ATS integrations here: https://www.hackerearth.com/recruit/enterprise/integrations/.

HackerEarth is a global company that helps large enterprises recruit, evaluate, and upskill developers based on specific skills. The company’s platform enables recruiters to make the most accurate and informed decisions about candidates, improve hiring efficiencies, facilitate continuous learning and development, and ensure the right developers are matched with the right positions. HackerEarth is also a leading facilitator of online hackathons and coding challenges, where its community of over 4 million developers can upskill and practice for employment interviews. The company was founded in 2012 with offices in San Francisco and India. For more information, visit www.hackerearth.com.

About Lever

Lever is a leading Talent Acquisition Suite that makes it easy for talent teams to reach their hiring goals and to connect companies with top talent. Lever is the only platform that provides all talent acquisition leaders with complete ATS and robust CRM capabilities in one product, LeverTRM. The Lever Hire and Lever Nurture features allow leaders to scale and grow their people pipeline, build authentic and long-lasting relationships, and source the right people to hire. Lever Analytics provides customized reports with data visualization, see offers completed and interview feedback, and more, to inform strategic decisions between hiring managers and executives alike.

Our platform also enables companies to hire with inclusivity in mind, and helps to eliminate any hiring bias. Lever supports the hiring needs of over 3,800 companies around the globe including the teams at Netflix, Atlassian, KPMG, and McGraw-Hill Education. For more information, visit https://www.lever.co.