Online recruitment platform TalentPad raises seed funding from Helion

Bangalore-based online recruitment platform TalentPad.com (formerly known as Talent Auction), which is registered as Zobtree Ventures Private Limited, has raised an undisclosed sum in its first round of institutional funding from Helion Venture Partners. The eight-month-old startup will use the funds for marketing and expanding its management team.

"The funding from Helion will help us strengthen marketing to attract the best talent and the best recruiters to our platform as well as create a world-class management team at TalentPad," Mayank Jain, co-founder and CEO TalentPad, said.

"There is a huge demand-supply gap in the recruitment segment, especially at the higher end of technology driven businesses, and TalentPad is ideally poised to meet the emerging opportunity," said Ritesh Banglani, partner, Helion who will join the board of the startup.

How it works

Once the candidate submits a detailed profile for approval, Talent Pad's team evaluates the candidature. Handpicked candidates, who get selected, participate in the upcoming auction called Talent Fair.

During the weeklong auction, employers compete to hand them interview offers online. A candidate can receive up to 10 interview offers. Post that, the candidate decides where to be interviewed and the interview process starts. At present, the firm has one auction a month.

TalentPad is currently working with 150 companies spread across sectors like e-commerce, online media, mobile, enterprise SaaS and online education. The company boasts of clients such as InMobi, MakeMyTrip, Snapdeal, Myntra and BookMyShow.

Companies pay a percentage of the gross salary, as fee, for every candidate hired. The average CTC of the candidates is Rs 15 lakh per annum, the firm claims. The services are free for candidates.

The company was founded by IIT and IIM alumni Mayank Jain, Nikhil Vij and Raghav Jain. Mayank and Raghav had previously formed a startup in the social referral space called Zobtree but later shut it. Before that, Mayank was an Entrepreneur In Residence at Smile Group and management consultant at Accenture while Raghav was an equity research analyst at J.P. Morgan and business analyst at Deloitte. Vij was a quantitative analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Several hiring platforms have raised funding in the past. Just yesterday, referral hiring solutions startup GrownOut raised Series A funding from Matrix Partners.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)