Angel investors back parent of Frapperz following pivot to AI-based recruitment

NumeroSeven Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding after pivoting from home services to start an artificial intelligence-based recruitment platform.

The company, which had earlier this month changed its brand name from Frapperz to Spotle.ai, said in a statement that it had raised money from a clutch of investors including existing backer, Australia-based healthcare entrepreneur Shiva Gunapu.

NumeroSeven was founded by husband-wife duo Jyotirmay Kanthal and Rimjhim Ray in 2016.

Kanthal told VCCircle that the process of pivoting the business had started earlier this year.

Co-founder Ray said Frapperz was started more as an aggregation platform for local freelancers. The services marketplace connected home improvement experts with individual residents and home owners mainly in Kolkata.

“As we built our technology, we realised that it would become a much bigger platform not just for freelancers but overall professionals to connect with opportunities and employers,” said Ray.

The company now claims to use machine learning and predictive modelling to match professionals and employers.

“Traditional ways of networking or job search do not work for a population that juggles careers, changes cities, shifts goals. So we built a contextual, real-time platform that adapts to their ambitions and intuitively matches them with opportunities they deserve,” said Ray.

Spotle currently claims to have a reach of more than 200,000 people.

NumeroSeven had raised around $500,000 in its previous rounds of funding.

Deals in the space

A number of startups in the broader recruitment space have raised funding in the recent past.

Earlier this month, VCCircle reported that IIM Ahmedabad’s incubator-cum-investor, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), had invested an undisclosed amount of seed capital in Noida-based placement solutions provider Reculta.

In April this year, Gurgaon-based HR tech startup Benepik raised seed money from a group of investors, including Vishal Bali, managing director at Nielsen China.

In March, Gurugram-based HireXP raised funds from Ambarish Gupta, chief executive of cloud telephony firm Knowlarity Communications.

Around the same time, angel investors Abhishek Goyal, founder of data analytics firm Tracxn, and former Flipkart executive Mekin Maheshwari picked up an undisclosed equity stake in Purple Quarter, a startup which scouts for top technology executives.