[Funding Alert] TurboHire Raises $1 Mn In Seed Fund Led By Pentathlon Ventures

Hyderabad-based artificial intelligence (AI) driven recruitment platform TurboHire announced on Thursday it has raised $1 million in seed funding with a series of institutional and individual investors. The investment round was led by Pentathlon Ventures. The other participants include Kia Ora Ventures as well as individual investors Monish Darda, Sanjay Balram, and Prabir Jha, among others.

Founded in 2018, the startup came into being to create a new AI-based platform to change how organizations make hiring decisions.

"At TurboHire, we have created a platform that deeply understands human requirements but acts with the speed and precision of a machine. It uses deep tech as well as data science to provide greater insight to recruiters and allows organizations to save more than 60 per cent in time to hire and cost of hire," said TurboHire chief executive officer Deepak Agrawal. "We have grown at a tremendous pace in the past two years and we are now working on enhancing user experience in the self-service model. COVID-19 and its effects on the job market have served to augment the demand for faster recruitment tools and we are looking at a significant growth globally over the coming years."

At a time when AI is driving revolutionary changes in almost all sectors, this globally relevant human-machine collaborative approach to recruitment has been found to be at least 60 per cent more effective in making better and faster hiring decisions.

"Organizations want to free up recruiters, improve the quality of hires, and make hiring decisions fair. AI-based tools can simplify and speed up recruitment tasks and enhance decision making. TurboHire stands out among Indian start-ups as they possess a strong DNA to scale. As founders turned funders ourselves, we are happy to invest and be part of their growth story," stated Pentathlon Ventures managing partners Hemant Joshi and Madhukar Bhatia.

The COVID-19 crisis has further highlighted the demand for automated AI-based process enhancing tools in recruitment as a huge surplus workforce has led to an increase in the volume of candidates for recruiters.

"As a senior human resource functionary, I have closely witnessed the evolution of the HR industry over the years. With increasing employment opportunities and a larger talent pool to select from, making the right hiring decisions faster is very critical for organizations today. AI and automation are definitely the next major drivers in the field. Over the past year, TurboHire has constantly featured among the most promising AI-based recruitment platforms and I am sure the funding will help it expand its operations globally as well as drive innovations," added Prabir Jha, People Advisory founder and chief executive officer.

The B2B (business-to-business) SaaS (software as a service) platform's AI paradigm helps in better resume parsing and helps create better differentiation among candidates. This results in highly improved recruitment outcomes. The startup is being employed at some of the marquee giants such as ICICI Bank, RPGEnterprise, among others.