Exclusive: On-demand staffing startup FeedMyPockets raises seed funding

Bengaluru-based on-demand staffing platform FeedMyPockets has raised seed funding of $625,000 (Rs 4.4 crore) from an undisclosed impact investor based in South Florida, US.

The startup will use the capital to further strengthen its tech infrastructure and expand operations, Prashant Janadri, co-founder, FeedMyPockets told TechCircle.

FeedMyPockets is a recruitment marketplace that appoints college students for small, hourly-based, temporary and seasonal jobs. It also provides a workforce management solution for employers to source talent and manages their hourly or part-time workforce.

Founded by Janadri and Naveen Ramachandra in 2017, FeedMyPockets currently operates in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Pune.

The company, claiming to be growing at 33% month-on-month, plans to focus on adding more active users (supply chain) to its platform.

Owned and operated by StellarSlog Technovation Pvt. Ltd, the company claims to have disbursed nearly Rs 2 crore of wages among students who have clocked more than 2.5 lakh working hours. Its app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Besides a mobile app, FeedMyPockets runs a web portal for both recruiters and job candidates. Recruiters need to fill in the nature of the job and the timeframe, review the candidate profiles and select the best fit or allow the startup to select.

Candidate profiles on the platform include ratings and previous work history. Job seekers need to enter basic details on the app, get certified and collect the onboarding kit from the company. The company will notify them on job alerts.

FeedMyPockets had 3,500 jobs posted on the platform from over 100 clients so far. It claims to fulfil the requirement in six hours. It also claims to have fulfilled about 25,000 job requirements, employing about 6,000 students. Flipkart, P&G, Samsung, Intel and Hero Honda are some clients the company have served so far.

Deals in the space

The broader online recruitment space has attracted investor interest over the past few months.

In June, IIM Ahmedabad’s incubator-cum-investor, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), invested seed capital in Noida-based placement solutions provider Reculta.

NumeroSeven Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which pivoted from a home services provider (Frapperz) to an artificial intelligence-based recruitment platform (Spotle.ai), secured angel funding from a clutch of individual investors.

In March, recruitment solutions startup HireXP raised funding from Ambarish Gupta, chief executive of cloud telephony firm Knowlarity Communications Pvt. Ltd.

In the same month, Purple Quarter, a startup which hires technology executives, secured angel investment from Abhishek Goyal, founder of data analytics firm Tracxn, and former Flipkart executive Mekin Maheshwari.

In January, Workflexi, which runs an online marketplace for contract workforce, secured Rs 1 crore ($157,200) in a seed round of funding.