Online recruitment solutions startup Interview Master secures funding from VentureNursery

Bangalore-based Interview Master Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd, which offers automated video interview-based recruiting solutions to organisations, has secured an undisclosed funding from VentureNursery, an angel-backed startup accelerator.

The funding will be utilised to expand the team, technology and network, its co-founder and CMO Tom Jose told Techcircle.in.

Interview Master was incubated at VentureNursery. The firm was inducted into the programme in December 2012 and graduated in April 2013. However, VentureNursery does not make any investment as part of the acceleration programme. The current investment has been done by angels in their individual capacity.

Set up in May 2012 by three alumni of IIT Bombay and a former management consultant, Interview Master focuses on providing automated video interviews for pre-screening candidates before actual job interviews. Hiring managers can set up these interviews and candidates can attend these via the startup's online platform anytime and from anywhere. Post-interview, the video responses of candidates can be evaluated by hiring managers, using an in-built evaluation tool. As the startup offers an automated interview process, a candidate can choose the timing and location as per his/her convenience. The innovative solution does away with issues like scheduling constraints, fraudulent candidature and getting feedback on potential candidates from experts within their companies.

"Besides benefits like better candidate quality, we help save over Rs 1 crore for any company hiring 1,000 people. For a large IT firm which hires 5,000-10,000 people annually, the saving could be enough to pay back the entire internal HR staffing salary and recruiting cost," said Jose.

Interview Master caters to a wide range of companies – from SMEs to very large corporations – and helps them build a rich candidate database based on video responses to critical questions. Its key customers include ABB, Allegis, Randstad and Wockhardt Pharma, among others. The firm also has offices in Chennai and Australia.

Interview Master offers a pay-per-use model to its clients with smaller recruiting plans and a user licence to those with large hiring requirements. However, the firm does not do candidate sourcing for companies.

Mumbai-based VentureNursery was launched in March 2012 by Shravan Shroff, founder and MD of Fame Cinemas, and Ravi Kiran, former CEO (South Asia and South-east Asia) at Starcom MediaVest Group and co-founder and managing partner of Friends of Ambition, a growth advisory company.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)