Hirequotient Raises $1.8M Pre-Seed Round
HireQuotient Technologies (HireQuotient), the Singapore-based start-up automating HR interviews for companies, today announced a pre-seed investment of USD $1.8 Million from leading angel investors. The problem that HQ solves is top of mind for business leaders and startup founders. Founders who have invested include Binny Bansal, Founder of Flipkart; Sumant Sinha, Chairman of ReNew Power, India’s leading independent renewable energy producer; Mohan Lakhamraju, Founder & CEO of Great Learning; Sujeet Kumar, co-founder of Indian e-commerce unicorn Udaan; Kunal Cred, co-founder of Fintech unicorn Cred, and Founders of 2 Indian edtech unicorns, 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.
HireQuotient, co-founded by Eugene Goh and Smarthveer Sidana, is disrupting the hiring process for business roles globally. HireQuotient’s virtual interviewers help companies test business skills at scale in an engaging and realistic manner, saving clients millions of dollars and man-hours. It has already been used by more than 30,000 candidates in over 42 countries and 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.
HireQuotient, will use the funding to accelerate technology and product development to enable them to better serve clients across different industries and roles in US, and EU.
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. Our early results with global clients are very promising, we could save 30-50% of their interviewers’ time per hire; helped reduce gender gap by 20%; and helped in identifying hidden gems.”
Speaking about the seed round, Smarth added: “HQ team is all ready to disrupt the business hiring space. This is just the start, the journey from here on will be very exciting.”
Commenting on the fundraise, Eugene, Co-Founder & CRO, commented “Almost all the HR and business leaders I’ve spoken to in the last 10 years struggle with talent acquisition, and specifically with talent selection and screening. Skills tests have become well-accepted for technical roles - there is no reason why business roles should be any different. 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”
Sumant Sinha, Chairman of ReNew Power, quoted, “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.”
Mohan Lakhamraju, CEO of Great Learning, quoted, “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.”
