Quikr acquires Hiree to enter white collar jobs space

Online classifieds firm Quikr has forayed into the white collar jobs space by acquiring IDG Ventures-backed Abhiman Technologies Pvt. Ltd which runs portal for white collar jobs Hiree.com, it said in a statement.

Hiree said its platform will be merged with QuikrJobs and the company will function out of Quikr's headquarters in Bangalore. The acquisition is expected to strengthen QuikrJobs' offerings to address recruitment needs for job categories across industries.

"We have created a successful business model and it's now time to scale up. Speed is in our DNA and Hiree's offering aimed at shortening recruitment cycle times is a great match," said Pranay Chulet, co-founder and CEO of Quikr.

A spokesperson for Quikr said around 40 employees from Hiree will join the merged entity as part of the transaction. However, he did not shed light on what would be the role of the Hiree founders in the new set-up.

In an e-mailed response, Manjunath Talwar, co-founder and CEO of Hiree, said the founding team will be part of the QuikrJobs vertical and that all the investors continue to stay invested.

Founded by IIM Kozhikode alumnus Talwar and BITS Pilani alumnus Abhijit Khasnis (both are former Yahoo executives) in May 2013, the company started off as myNoticePeriod.com to help recruiters reduce lead time for hiring by creating a database of readily available candidates.

The startup does this by smart matching algorithms, real-time alerts, a private messaging system and a dedicated Android app for recruiters. Recently, it also launched a walk-in management system and started posting resumes as videos.

The acquisition comes three months after Techcircle.in reported that Hiree reduced around 11% of its workforce.

The company has raised $3.25 million (Rs 22 crore) from IDG Ventures India and angel investors including Ravi Gururaj, Raghu Krishnananda, Shamsunder Talreja and Prashant Kirtane.

It is not clear whether IDG Ventures, which is the single-largest investor in Hiree, has exited or rolled over its investment. An e-mail query sent to Sudhir Sethi, founder chairman and managing director of IDG Ventures India, did not elicit a response at the time of filing this report.

IDG Ventures had invested $3 million (Rs 20 crore) in a Series A funding in myNoticePeriod.com in January 2015.

In 2014, the company had raised over $330,000 (Rs 2 crore) in seed funding from IDG Ventures India, with participation from a group of individuals including Prashant Kirtane, CTO and co-founder of travelmob.com; Shamsunder Talreja, owner of JetSet Capital; Raghu Krishnananda, former senior director (product engineering) at Yahoo; and Ravi Gururaj of Frictionless Ventures.

Quikr launched a rebranded version of its in-house beauty services after acquiring on-demand beauty services platform Salosa in May.

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