Women-oriented job portal Sheroes raises funding from Raghav Bahl, 500 Startups, others

Applied Life Pvt Ltd, which runs a jobs and career community for women Sheroes.in, has raised an undisclosed amount in angel round from Quintillion Media and 500 Startups, besides a group of individual investors including Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Google's Rajan Anandan and Flipkart's Binny Bansal.

Others who participated in the funding round include Flipkart's chief people officer Mekin Maheshwari, Freshdesk founder Girish Mathrubootham, Indus Khaitan of Bitzer Mobile (which was acquired by Oracle) and Capillary Technologies' Krishna Mehra.

Sheroes helps women find opportunities including work-from-home and part-time jobs, corporate roles and startup options including entrepreneurial opportunities like franchising. It is a community where women can find mentorship and career content and resources along with career advice.

Launched in January 2014, the startup works with companies to provide support for their workforce needs and helps them build women-centric channels. It claims that with over 6,000 companies and half a million women professionals on its platform, it has already processed over a million service requests for its community members.

"It was important to bring in the right kind of investors as we build a high impact, high-growth organisation. The (fund) raise will help Sheroes improve the quality of its product and scale its community," said founder Sairee Chahal.

Sairee holds an M Phil in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru Vishvavidyalaya and a post-graduate diploma in business management from Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad. In 2006, she co-founded SAITA Consulting, a consulting firm working with SMBs. Previously, she worked with headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles and industry body CII.

"Sairee and her team have created a unique opportunity for Indian women, empowering them with access to careers, while allowing them to work from where they are most productive," said Ritu Kapur, co-founder of Quintillion Media.

As part of the investment, Kapur will join the board of Sheroes.

Quntillion was floated by Raghav Bahl and his wife Rita after they sold their stake in Network18 to Reliance Industries.

BMR Advisors acted as the transaction advisor to Quintillion Media.