PE firm Turn/River Capital acquires HR tech startup

By Shweta Sharma

  • 05 Mar 2018

Bengaluru-based HR tech startup Recruiterbox has been acquired by US-headquartered private equity firm Turn/River Capital in a cash deal, according to a media report.

The size of the deal was undisclosed.

The acquisition is aimed at helping Turn/River build a suite of HR-tech products and Recruiterbox will be merged into the PE firm's performance management solutions banner Applied Training Systems Inc (ATSI), reports The Economic Times.

“Everyone in the team continues to work in exactly the same roles as before,” Recruiterbox co-founder Girish Redekar was quoted as saying. "Turn/River Capital will help with its expertise on the sales and marketing side — in accelerating the growth of SaaS companies."

E-mail queries sent to Recruiterbox did not elicit a response till the time of publishing this report.

Recruiterbox is a software-as-a-service (Saas) company founded in 2011 by Redekar, Raghuveer Kancherla and Raj Sheth. The bootstrapped firm makes an applicant tracking software which helps HR departments manage their hiring.

It pitches its platform as a centralised location which provides all hiring-related information and ensures that no candidate falls through the cracks.

Recruiterbox's customers include Groupon, Progressive Insurance, Crunchbase, Scripted, US Department of Energy, among others.

Turn/River Capital, which is headquartered in San Francisco, is a technology-focused growth capital investor specialising in spin-outs, buyouts, recapitalisation, and growth equity investments in small-scale technology, web and SaaS companies.

The firm says it seeks to step into the space between traditional venture capital, private equity firms and strategic investors and help companies grow by combining capital with marketing and sales.

The PE firm had previously acquired other HR tech companies such as ReviewSnap and Trakstar under the ATSI banner.

The Indian HR tech space has attracted considerable interest from investors of late.

Last week, Qandle, a cloud-based HR management and employee engagement platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), raised $1.2 million (Rs 7.7 crore) in pre-Series A funding led by Hong Kong-headquartered venture capital firm Redwood Internet Ventures Ltd.

In October, AVR EdGE Networks Pvt. Ltd, which runs human resource technology startup EdGE Networks, secured $4.5 million (about Rs 29 crore) in Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital.

The month before that, HR tech startup Shortlist had raised $1 million (around Rs 6.4 crore) in seed investment from US-based venture capital firm University Ventures and a clutch of other investors.