The HR Fund invests $500K in Chennai-based recruitment solutions startup PiQube

Human resource ventures focused private investment firm The HR Fund has invested $500,000 (Rs 3.2 crore) in PiQube Analytics Pvt Ltd, a Chennai-based HR startup, it said on Wednesday.

The company will use the funding for expanding technology and sales teams as well as geographically within India and to Southeast Asia.

Founded in 2012 by Jayadev Mahalingam, PiQube assists recruiters in finding suitable candidates according to their skills. PiQube's algorithm uses data patterns to identify matching candidates who could be interviewed. It seeks to solve two problems in the hiring industry— sourcing and screening.

Mahalingam worked with Infosys for around four years before becoming an entrepreneur. He also worked with Drone Network and Work Protocols.

"We are interested in looking at the recruitment sector as we believe it is ripe for innovation. Over the years, a large chunk of processes in this segment have remained manual, leading to inefficiencies and high recruitment costs. PiQube has the technology and the team to provide new dimensions to how new-age recruitment processes should work," said Utkarsh Joshi, principal, The HR Fund.

The HR Fund has a $12.2 million corpus and is managed by Withya HR Fund Pvt Ltd. It provides seed or startup capital to HR companies operating in India and seeks to invest in professional employee organisations, contingency staffing, training and HR software companies. The fund typically invests between $0.3 million and $1.5 million in its portfolio companies.

It has a network spread across India, Singapore and the US with functional expertise combining HR, technology and finance.

This is its third investment. It had earlier invested in HR media platform People Matters and PeopleStrong HR Services Pvt Ltd.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)