Article: HR Fund Invests in PiQube

Entrepreneurship

HR Fund Invests in PiQube

More investments in the recruitment tech space in India shows the business criticality of making this function more efficient
HR Fund Invests in PiQube

Picture the context of today’s recruiter in India: India is rated the 3rd most difficult country to fill job positions according to Manpower’s Talent Shortage Survey, just after Japan and Brazil and with double percentage of difficulty level as the global average. India has 35% of talent in the age group less than 30 years that are employable, according to the India Skills Report 2014 – Wheebox, PeopleStrong & CII. Added to that, every year overall number of applicants per open position is rising. In the last 3 years CEB research shows a 33% increase in applicant volumes.

As one can imagine, there is tremendous pressure for recruitment functions to bring forth disruptive changes, redefine new rules of the game, and start delivering business results that is expected of them. This provides a perfect breeding ground for innovation and entrepreneurs.

In the last 18 to 24 months we have seen many start-ups come up and many investments flowing in the space of recruitment technology. In February, Mynoticeperiod.com raised Rs 18 crore Series A funding from IDG Ventures. A few months earlier, in October last year, Talentpad.com and Grownout.com both raised an undisclosed sum in their first round of institutional funding from Helion Venture Partners and Matrix Partners India, respectively. In July last year, Talview.com also raised an undisclosed amount from Mayfield Ventures. Read my previous blog More Funding for HR Start ups.

This week, the HR Fund – a private investment fund and also investor in People Matters – announced the investment of $500,000 (Rs. 3.3 crore) in PiQube. PiQube is aiming at mastering a hiring intelligence tool that could replace manual work that recruiters need to do in shortlisting resumes. PiQube technology is based on analytics, machine learning and mimics a recruiter’s brain. “A tool that thinks like you,” the PiQube teams call it. PiQube has another cool product that helps recruiters create socio-metric profiles of candidates’ social and professional networks at a glance. The business benefit bottom line is to give higher success rate to the recruitment function and build certainty in the hiring process.

Several startups have been trying to find a solution to the never-ending challenge of hiring. Each one of them is looking at solving a problem from a different perspective and it will be exciting to see how these innovations change the recruitment landscape and its dynamics.

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Topics: Entrepreneurship, Strategic HR

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