Online hiring platform for blue collar workers Aasaanjobs.com raises $1.5M from Inventus & IDG

Mumbai-based Aasaanjobs Pvt Ltd, which runs an online recruitment platform for blue collar workers under the same brand name, has raised $1.5 million (about Rs 9.2 crore) in funding from Inventus Capital Partners and IDG Ventures, according to a top executive of the company.

"We will use the funds for product development, ramping up Mumbai operations by setting up a verification centre (of candidates), launching a pilot in a metro and a Tier I city, as well as for marketing," said Ishank Gupta, co-founder, Aasaanjobs.

The development was first reported by The Economic Times.

The startup was founded in late 2013 by IIT-ians Dinesh Goel, Ishank, Gaurav Toshniwal, Aditya Gupta and Kunal Jadhav. While Goel has previously been an analyst at Deutsche Bank, Jadhav has worked at design firm Laugh Out Loud Ventures and Ishank has worked at Boston Consulting Group.

Aasaanjobs.com is a recruitment platform that is creating a digital identity for entry level and mid-level jobs in the country. It aggregates people who are looking for work and employers who are looking to hire. The firm has a verification centre in Mumbai (Powai) where it feeds data about the candidates manually. However, the match making between clients and candidates is algorithm-based.

The startup claims of having about 100 corporate clients from e-commerce, manufacturing and retail segment, and about 6,000 candidates on its platform. It further claims of having already facilitated about 500 match-making between the two. The company charges between 4-10 per cent of the annual salary of selected candidates as its fee. Presently, it has a team of about 50 employees.

Lately, online hiring platforms have received significant VC attention. Over the last few months, referral hiring solutions startup GrownOut raised Series A funding from Matrix Partners; another referral recruitment portal MyRefers.com raised Series A funding from Bedrock Venture; and online recruitment platform TalentPad raised seed funding from Helion.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)