In 2017, Aditya Rajgarhia and Sarbojit Mallick founded Delhi-based Instahyre, an AI-based advanced hiring platform to help companies navigate recruiting in an easy and efficient manner. The company also claims to focus on reducing the cost of hiring by providing top-quality candidates with just one click.
“For employers, we are solving the problem of both cost and the time it takes to hire, even though there is enough demand and supply. Likewise, we are solving the problem of matching jobseekers with highly personalised job opportunities, without any of the spam,” says Co-founder and Chief Business Officer, Sarbojit Mallick.
The HRtech startup has developed InstaMatch, a proprietary technology that understands the DNA of a company, the job, and the recruiter, and uses this data to create a hiring model for that company using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and related technologies. For example, by analysing present and past employees of the company, it tracks the kind of companies and industries from which this company tends to hire.
“Our technology also uses company information to generate a personalised email that is sent to candidates by the recruiters, highlighting why the candidate should consider working for the company that is hiring. It finds candidates that match the companies’ requirements and DNA,” adds Sarbojit.
He says that InstaMatch also understands each candidate thanks to data points such as skills, previous work experience and duration, education, social media posts (such as Github contributions for developers and Twitter sentiment analysis for non-engineers) and finally the candidate’s career preferences. It then shows the candidates the list of job posts they would be suitable for.
Instahyre’s clientele includes a host of companies, from Fortune 100 names and unicorns to SMEs and startups. It currently has a client base of over 10,000 companies and a candidate base of over 40 million, according to its founders.
The team
Instahyre’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and founder Aditya, who grew up in Delhi, has a master’s in computer science from Stanford, where he studied machine learning and scalable computer systems, both of which are critical to building Instahyre, he says.
Sarbojit has done his engineering at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur, and MBA from the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai. Previously, he founded Triphippie, a marketplace for adventure travel with batchmates from NIT and NITIE. Sarobjit says this experience taught him the value of client delight and customer satisfaction in shaping a business and increasing brand recall.
Instahyre has a team size of 65, with 50 percent in engineering and product functions.
Funding and monetisation
Instahyre has raised angel capital from Kunal Shah (Cred), Haresh Chawla (Partner at True North Co), Ashish Hemrajani and Parikshit Dir (Bookmyshow), Khadim Batti (Founder of Whatfix) and ixigo founder Aloke Bajpai, among others.
“We are profitable from 2018 onwards, and expecting 4X in terms of revenue by the end of this year,” says Sarbojit.
Instahyre works on a SaaS model with annual subscriptions for monetisation. “We are developing products which will make the recruitment process seamless from sourcing to offer,” Sarbojit adds.
Its pricing is dependent on various factors. The company has different plans for different needs but there is always a free option with some limited profile access, says Sarbojit.
The way ahead
As per Sarbojit, “the markets which we are addressing are the permanent staffing market for white-collar jobs, and tools such as ATS (applicant tracking software), talent assessment tools, and bulk-hiring solutions. The market size of the white-collar staffing market in India is around $1 billion.”
In the next year, Instahyre will be expanding to the US and EU markets.
“Many of the US hiring teams of our Indian clients have expressed interest in using Instahyre for their US hiring, based on the impact they have seen at their Indian offices,” states Sarbojit.
Instahyre’s goal has always been to expand horizontally to all white-collar roles. “We are already gearing up to start catering to the IT services industry, which will drastically increase our serviceable market for the next couple of years,” Sarbojit says.
“Our existing customers are very keen for Instahyre to expand to non-tech roles and provide the same 10X experience that we’re providing them for tech. This is because they face the same challenges for their non-tech hiring that they face for tech-hiring,” he adds.
Instahyre competes with the likes of Naukri and LinkedIn.
