The news headline says:
'HR Technology has taken over several rule-based HR jobs. Several online HR assistants are seen addressing day-to-day employee queries.'
This isn’t a far-fetched future anymore. The countdown has begun and soon you will see all these happening around. As a step towards such future of work, the start ups have already started grabbing big investors’ attention as never before.
HR tech start-ups are bringing a radical change in transforming the HR practices in the B2B space. As per PeopleStrong’s estimation, India Inc. can save at least $600 million annually by 2021 using HR Technology. Of course, the human interaction and the human touch must never be made redundant, and that’s the catch of survival. But the fact is that Big Data and Machine Learning has almost arrived. In order to be in the business and stay ahead in the competition, there is no alternative but to start investing and adopting technology as soon as you can.
A good movement in technology is clearly evident due to the rise in HR Tech start-ups. It is estimated that the HR software market globally will cross US$9.2 billion by 2022. Though the big enterprises are moving a bit slower, the start ups by virtue of their clean slate are moving faster. With no legacy, they are looking for the latest and the most reasonable HR technology for their businesses. Some of the recent examples include:
- In the last week of June in an HR Tech Summit in Toronto, AI start-up Zoom.ai took away a grand prize of $20,000 for its automated assistant. Not only this, Zoom.ai closed $2.1m in Seed Funding as well. This 2016 founded company, aims to automate operational tasks through virtual assistant for reducing workplace distractions bringing in the effective delivery of task. The system takes charge of many organizational tasks including travel logistics and meeting schedule.
- HR Tech start-up, Darwinbox, offering cloud-based enterprise Human Resource Management (HRMS) solution has raised $4 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed India Partners during last week of June 2017.
- Zeta has bought a stake in the HR firm named ZingHR. It will now also offer Zeta’s digital employee benefits solutions and Zeta will eventually gain access to ZingHR’s existing client base. It has also raised funds from its existing investor Triton. The company intends to use the funding to expand its client base and strengthen technology platform.
- EdGE Networks generated revenue of Rs 3.82 crore in 2015-16. In the past, it has seen a huge spike in its top line. Founded in 2012, with automating the exercise of matching resumes with job descriptions, it has built an HR technology platform, backed by artificial intelligence, data science, analytics and machine learning. The company is now looking to raise another round of funding soon.
- London based HR tech startup 'inploi' has raised another half a million in funding bringing total funding raised by the business to £1 million.
- Recent entry of Google in the lower-end of the recruitment tech-market by offering a suite of recruitment technology products under the brand name of 'Google Hire' is set to give a big push to talent acquisition tech market
According to a study by ADP, nearly 63% of employees in Indian offices believe automation and artificial intelligence will eventually replace people doing process-based and repetitive work. And all these technological manifestations unfold a lot of changes ahead in the ecosystem in areas of deep machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. A completely transformed HR technology centric digitally empowered employee of future can be foreseen. However, it is the right and balanced integration of human and technology which actually will answer all our deep rooted fears and inhibitions in years to come.