Singapore-based HireQuotient, which automates HR interviews for companies, has received $1.8 million in its pre-seed round of funding from prominent angel investors, including seven Asian unicorn founders, the company announced.
Key angel investors in the round include Binny Bansal, Flipkart founder; Sumant Sinha, Chairman of ReNew Power; Mohan Lakhamraju, Founder & CEO of Great Learning; Sujeet Kumar, co-founder at Udaan; Kunal Shah, co-founder of Cred, Nimesh Kampani, Co-Founder & CEO of Trica, along with his syndicate on LetsVenture platform; as well as other leading investors across South-east Asia and The United States.
The proceeds for the financing round will be used to accelerate technology and product development to better serve clients across different industries and roles in US and EU, the company said in a statement.
HireQuotient, co-founded by Eugene Goh and Smarthveer Sidana this year, aims to disrupt the hiring process for business roles globally.
At present, it is being used by more than 30,000 candidates in over 42 countries, and has "generated significant time savings for hiring organisations while improving candidate quality in interviews. Their clients include a leading global management consulting firm and a Singapore government agency," the company said.
Smarth, Co-Founder & CEO, believes that this is the right time to revolutionize how companies screen talent for business skills and said: “Candidates have become more used to virtual interviews during the pandemic, and the technology needed to power assessments has matured.” Smarth, co-founder and CEO at HireQuotient said.
“We could save up to 50% of their interviewers’ time per hire; helped reduce gender gap by 20%; and helped in identifying hidden gems,” he added.
Smarth obtained his Bachelors in Technology from IIT Delhi, and was a Management Consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
“Our secret sauce is a deep understanding of bias-free skill interviews & evaluation, which enables us to tell companies about candidates who can do the job,” Eugene, Co-Founder & CRO at HireQuotient said.
Eugene started his career in the Singapore civil service before spending 8.5 years at BCG. After BCG, Eugene worked with a number of HR tech start-ups and served as an Advisor to multiple startups and accelerators. He has an MSc in Economics for Development and a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, both from the University of Oxford.
“I truly believe in what Smarth and his team are building at HireQuotient. They are solving a deep problem in business hiring that most organisations face, and the team is strongly positioned to solve and scale it globally. Bold vision to positively impact millions of lives, strong founder-market fit and focus on execution are key factors that drove me to invest in them,” investor Sumant Sinha of ReNew Power, said.
“I believe that screening processes by companies need to be more holistic and skill based rather than just CV based. Skilled and otherwise suitable candidates from non-target schools get filtered out in CV shortlisting. HireQuotient is solving this problem by building AI virtual interviewers that assess business skills of candidates. Future of candidate screening will definitely look beyond the resume,” said Mohan Lakhamraju, CEO of Great Learning.
