Technical recruiting platform HackerRank raises $30 mn in Series C round

Bangalore- and California-based Interview Street Inc., which offers a technical recruiting platform for enterprises under the brand name HackerRank, has raised $30 million (Rs 192 crore) in a Series C funding round led by growth capital firm JMI Equity, a company statement said.

HackerRank's existing investors Khosla Ventures, Battery Ventures, Randstad Innovation Fund, and Chartline Capital Partners also participated in the new round, taking the total funding of the firm to $58.2 million. As part of the transaction, Suken Vakil, general partner at JMI Equity, joined HackerRank’s board of directors.

The company will use the new capital to accelerate its growth in the enterprise segment, expand and support its 3.4 million developer community, and advance its data science research and capabilities, the statement added. Companies like BlackRock, Atlassian, VMware, Capital One, and Looker comprise its 1,000-customer base.

Founded in 2010 by Harishankaran K and Vivek Ravisankar, HackerRank offers a software-as-a-software (SaaS)-based recruitment platform to screen technical candidates by testing them on programming challenges. The company was also selected for the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator programme, which also invested in the firm. Its other investors include ZenShin Capital, The Morpheus, SV Angel and Start Fund.

The company last raised funding in July 2015, when it secured $7.5 million from Japanese firm Recruit Holding’s HR Technology Fund. Peeyush Ranjan, vice president at Google; Greg Badros, former senior director (engineering) at Google and former vice president (engineering and products) at Facebook; and Dan Rubinstein, director (product management) had also participated in that round.

In 2014, HackerRank raised $9.2 million in its Series B round from existing investor Khosla Ventures and US-based VC firm Battery Ventures, among others.

“The need for developers is only going to increase as every company becomes a software company. To hire the talent they need to drive innovation, companies can't afford to continue to use antiquated resumes in the first step of their hiring process," said Ravisankar, co-founder and chief executive of the venture. He added that the company's platform helps developers showcase their skills, while employers can evaluate them in an unbiased way.

The company’s recruitment platform has two sets of users – its social platform is used by hackers in over 40 countries to hone their skills, while the enterprise version helps companies to screen candidates and conduct phone interviews with analytics and insights thrown in. In addition, the platform gives them an opportunity to host competitive programming contests.

Both the founders hold B Tech degrees in computer science and engineering from the National Institute of Technology (Tamil Nadu). Prior to setting up the firm, Harishankaran was a software engineer at IBM, while Ravisankar worked as a software development engineer at Amazon.com.

"We look forward to helping the HackerRank team scale their efforts as we see a massive opportunity (in the space). Over 10% of the world's population of software developers and over a thousand companies use HackerRank," said JMI Equity’s Vakil.

HackerRank mainly competes with UK-based Codelity and US-based HireVue. Codelity offers automated assessment tests and professional assessment services to help recruiters save hours of time in recruiting software developers, while HireVue is an on-demand video interview platform.

JMI Equity is a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software companies. Founded in 1992, JMI has invested in over 130 businesses in its target markets, and has successfully completed over 85 exits and raised more than $3 billion of committed capital.