Hyderabad Angels invests $400K in social recruiting startup WhistleTalk

Bangalore-based social recruiting startup WhistleTalk Pvt Ltd has received $400,000 in angel funding from Hyderabad Angels. The funds will primarily be used for running the company's operations and increasing its sales and marketing efforts. The investment was led by Hyderabad Angel member Raghu Bathina.

"Globally, we see a trend of companies leveraging the influence circles of their current employees to find future employees. WhistleTalk is out to revolutionise the way organisations find talent," said Bathina, who is also a director at WhistleTalk.

WhistleTalk was founded by Vinoo Chacko (CEO) and Ajay Nema (CTO) in March 2011 and it became operational in January this year. An IIM-Bangalore alumnus, Chacko has worked at companies like Novell, Huawei Technologies, and Citrix Systems. He also holds a MBA degree in strategy and leadership from The Indian School of Business. Nema has worked at Ipolicy Networks, Radius Synergies and Citrix R&D India, and holds a B.E degree in computer science from Samrat Ashok Technological Institute, Vidisha.

WhistleTalk is a referral hiring application that enables company employees and hiring managers to use their social networks to find the right talent. The company's matching and virality engine ensures that right opportunities reach the best candidates at the earliest. Also, as openings are referred by friends even passive candidates are more likely to apply.

According to Nema, the company uses a highly scalable, distributed computing engine to search thousands of profiles in real time and recommend relevant applicants, who are reachable through the social network of current employees.

Jobseekers are further motivated because all applications are employee referred. For the company, getting qualified candidates who already know about their company and at a significantly lower cost makes sense. Here's a quick video explaining the service.

"Everyone wins with WhistleTalk, while employees earn a referral bonus from their respective companies, applicants find access to hidden openings (till now known only to current employees) and organisations can quickly hire talent," said Chacko.

The team size of the startup is 10 as of now, but the company is looking to increase this number to 15 in the next six months.

Hyderabad Angels is a city-based group of angel investors backed by The Indus Entrepreneurs. It invests in early-stage business and also provides mentoring and inputs on strategy and execution to the startups.

Earlier this year, Hyderabad Angels had invested Rs 2 crore in Hyderabad-based education services startup Edutor Technologies (India) Pvt Ltd. It also invested a similar amount in Mumbai-based Green India Building Systems and Services. Last year, it invested Rs 2 crore in Hyderabad-based Identis, which develops custom RFID chips for the manufacturing industry.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)