Technology is transforming the way HR functions today. The Indian tech start-up economy is maturing very fast. The speed and the scale at which the disruptions are happening in the HR technology space is giving birth to several innovative of TechHR startups that are transforming the way HR and businesses function. The investments in HR technology, by the end of 2016, have been $2,395 Billion (In 2015, it was $2,472 Billion), alongside a projected 15 percent increase in deal activity, according to a report by CB Insights, a global analytics firm.

To recognize innovations in the HR marketplace, People Matters Tech HR’ 17  Spotlight program was designed as a mentorship program for 27 emerging HR Technology start-ups. The initiative aimed at providing a platform to these startups where they get wider audience and access to mentors including investors and senior HR and business leaders. This year it was bigger and better, as emerging HR Technology start-ups across Asia gave elevator pitches to explain their idea, technology, and business model to the mentors during the conference.

Here is the series of HR tech startups defining their product offerings that are helping to solve HR challenges through technology -  transforming the way recruitment, talent management, and HR decision-making is taking place.

HR Tech Startups

1.   

Startup Name: Karma Notes

Incorporation: 2016

Team size: 2 to 5 people

Raised funding: Not raised any capital yet

Client size: Less than 10

About product offering: Enhances employee performance through continuous, actionable and timely 360-degree feedback.

Key problems addressed by your technology: It helps solve the problem of performance management system (PMS) irregular feedback, few coaching conversations and lack of transparency.

Elevator Pitch:  One of the significant problems faced by the organizations is that the performance management systems are not able to deliver the expected results. As per Deloitte Research, 2016- failing performance management systems are causing loses worth billions to employers wherein managers are spending a lot of time on these processes. As per CEB (2016), 84% - Companies are looking for a change in their PMS process, and Harvard Business Review (2015) indicates that 58% executives believe that performance management approach kills engagement. Also, in the recent years, global market size is increasing rapidly. In 2016, HR technology market size was worth $14 billion, and Talent Management technology market size was $5 billion, and it is expected to grow to $11billion in 2019, as per Deloitte HR Trends Report and Market& Markets HR Tech Report, 2017.

Karma Notes was created to simplify the whole PMS process, and it does so with its one-minute feedback app. The core purpose of Karma Notes is to help in the development of the employee. This is done by providing an avenue to get real-time feedback from manager and peers on behaviors along with specific developmental inputs.Continuous use of Karma Notes helps in making productive and engaged employees. The use of the app is simple and painless. It uses simple gesture-based swipes to give feedback and also gives feed forward advice for development. Karma Notes is developed by global talent management professionals and is built by combining HR Science and behavior economics.

The app also provides immediate recognition. It creates a summary for the user where they can interact with the person giving them the feedback. It has SAAS based technology with a subscription-based model for more than 1000 users. Karma Notes comes with a real-time dashboard providing clear direction on areas of development. The assessment is done on 20 behaviors identified and is based on a study of multiple competency models like DDI, Hogan, Big Eight, Lominger, etc.

2.

Name: Voxta (ChatChit)

Team size: 10 -20 employees

Raised funding: Have not raised any capital so far

Client size: Less than 10 

About product offering: ChatChit assists in English learning for jobs. It is quick and engaging mobile app.

Key problems addressed by the technology: Designed to help companies assess & train candidates in spoken and written English for jobs (bilingual, automated through speech recognition, NLP, and machine learning).

Elevator Pitch:  Hiring suitable talent is the greatest concern for organizations today. For every 400 applicants, recruiters end up hiring only 10. Chatchit is designed to enable employers to hire the best. The app is speech recognition tool and AI-powered assessment and training platform for learning English. Using it, people can practice speaking, do assessments and get instant feedback. Chatchit can be assessed on mobile, desktop and tablets. Its single test analyzes on the parameters of reasoning, logic, aptitude, and cultural fit for the organization. This tool is built to help HR’s assess and train good communicators. Chatchit has worked with global BPO over a six-month pilot in 15 locations, with 2000 candidates doing 15-minute desktop and mobile assessments. The result was that they were able to cut face to face interview time by 50%. It also helped in cutting cost by 60% and cut the process time by over 75 %. Overall, Chatchit helps employers to hire faster, better and helps organization in reducing turnover. It goes beyond and tests culture and company fit. It is also customizable as per the organization’s requirement.



3.

Startup Name: Oust

Incorporation: 2015

Team size: 10-15 people

Raised funding: Yes, less than USD 1,000,000

Client size: Between 10 to 20 companies

About product offering: Oust Labs is a technology company that is pioneering gamified, mobile micro-learning for enterprises. Oust has developed a proprietary methodology that leverages a simple and highly effective style to deliver personalized learning outcomes

Key problems addressed by your technology: With the reduced attention span of humans today, the existing formats of training have become redundant. Micro-learning breaks training into short modules of 3 minutes and is very effective.

Elevator Pitch: In the present times, the economy is redefining the $70b skilling ecosystem and the common problem faced by companies is increased competition, constant innovation & disruption. Today, the workforce is distributed and because of which there is a large gap of information in organizations. How Oust helps? Oust is focused on bite-sized learning on the mobile device, where the content is broken into modules of 3 to 5 minutes. It is personalized & gamified and Integrated into the workflow to ensure employees go through the training. It includes Web apps, mobile apps, SDKs& APIs to integrate to CRM and BOTS. The content in the backend can be repurposed in multiple formats (text, images, video, vr, ar). It can be personalized based on company, profile, and many languages (up to 33). Oust has SAAS offering across all domains from healthcare, retail, telecom, on-demand, and e-commerce.  

(Note: This article is a series on HR Tech Startups. There is no ranking involved. The information about start-ups is as per a submission and presentation by startups at the People Matters TechHR Spotlight program)

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