Doubling down on the Future of Work – Why we invested in AI-powered virtual recruitment platform Expertia AI
The broad human resources and recruitment spectrum has been a specific area of interest for Endiya Partners for well over six years. In the post-Covid world, with the so-called ‘Great Resignation’ and the fight for talent across global markets, the need for organisations to identify the best talent and build speed and accuracy into their recruitment processes has become critical.
The current Endiya portfolio already includes companies that are addressing aspects of the human resources and recruitment landscape using technology, now also referred to as Work-tech. Darwinbox, one of our earliest investments and now a Unicorn, helps engage and nurture human capital across the hire-to-retire cycle, in both small and large enterprises, across global markets. On the other hand, SuperBeings, which we entered in mid-2021, is building an integrated SaaS platform to help organizations accelerate growth with OKRs, continuous performance management and employee engagement. And Gigforce is a B2B full-stack on-demand gig staffing platform with a mission to help gig workers learn, earn, grow ensuring stability professionally and personally.
The latest addition to the Endiya Work-tech portfolio is Expertia AI. Founded in 2021 by Kanishk Shukla and Akshay Gugnani, this young Bangalore based startup is building an AI-powered virtual recruitment platform.
It offers a one-click hiring solution for SMEs, who don't need to spend time and resources on building their own tools. The Expertia solution allows SMEs to create a careers page on their websites, post jobs using customised and easy-to-navigate JD (job descriptions) templates, publish the job posts across 25-plus job boards, and create a single database of current and past applications. The algorithm that powers the platform reviews candidate skill-sets, roles and career paths and identifies the top 10 candidates for the role from a pool of thousands of applications.
While the platform currently targets SMEs, even larger organisations, which may already have systems of their own, can connect to Expertia through APIs and use specific aspects of the platform.
Apart from the potential of the platform itself, what also drew Endiya to Expertia is the founders. We were initially introduced to them as part of the Entrepreneur First programme and were immediately able to see the perfect combination of complementary skills they brought to the table. Kanishk Shukla is a serial entrepreneur who earlier founded and successfully exited Koovs.com after its listing on AIM/LSE and as CEO of Expertia steers the business end of the company. Akshay Gugnani is a research scholar from IBM and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and heads product development & tech at Expertia as its CTO. Both closely studied the recruitment problem in their respective careers and decided to bring their learnings together to create a one-stop solution.
Expertia, though still in the early stages of product roll-out, has already seen a fair bit of traction in the market. It has a growing list of over 500 companies, over 1,000 recruiters and more than 100,000 professionals currently using the platform. We believe that Expertia is well-positioned to grab a significant share of the estimated over $500 billion technology-enabled recruitment solutions market. While the company is currently targeting the Indian market, the company is poised to become a global player, as is the case with many of our other portfolio companies too.
The current Seed round, where we have teamed up with Chiratae Ventures and Entrepreneur First, is just the beginning. We look forward to building a great venture with Team Expertia.
