Jobtech startup Able Jobs raises $1.8 mn in seed funding round

JobBox Technologies, which runs entry-level talent hiring platform Able Jobs, on Wednesday said it has raised $1.8 million in a seed funding round led by SAIF Partners.

Y Combinator, Titan Capital, Firstcheque and former WhatsApp CBO Neeraj Arora also participated in the round.

The fresh capital will be deployed for product development and hiring purposes, a statement said, adding that the company also plans to build training products and expand to the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), and banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sectors.

The startup, which was part of accelerator Y Combinator’s winter 2020 batch, currently employs 10 employees.

The Bengaluru-based company, with a clientele that includes firms such as BigBasket, WhiteHat Jr, Sharechat, Zeta, NoBroker and Toppr, hires entry-level talent in the fields of sales, support and marketing. It also offers skill development and online training courses.

While it charges companies on a per-hire basis, Able Jobs also offers a subscription-based commision model to cater to continuous hiring requirements, a company spokesperson told TechCircle.

“With the rising needs of such platforms in a post-Covid job market, we are confident that Able Jobs can catalyse the growth and development of the entry-level hiring ecosystem in our country while scaling up efficiently at the same time,” Deepak Gaur, managing director of SAIF Partners India, said.

The company was founded by Ravish Agrawal, Svatantra Kumar and Siddharth Srivastav in May 2019. The founders all have experience working in the edtech sector -- while Agrawal and Srivastav were product managers at Udacity, Kumar founded Studyfolks, an online platform for notes-sharing on campus.

“Over the past decades, companies have invested a lot of capital in hiring and training entry level talent. We, at Able jobs, are focused on solving this by partnering with companies and helping them hire trained professionals with a single click and no upfront investment,” Agarwal, also the CEO of Able Jobs, said.

With organisations prioritising skills more than college degrees, talent requirements have become very dynamic, the statement said. In the past few months, Able Jobs has helped companies hire 11 times faster, while witnessing a four-fold increase in deployable talent, it added.

The jobtech sector has evinced attention from investors in the past couple of years. 

On Tuesday, Masai School, an online coding school that works on a job-oriented model for learners, disclosed a $2.5 million capital infusion in a bridge funding round.

Seattle and Bengaluru based impact investor Unitus Ventures, which has developed an interest in the space, invested in gig workforce hiring startups Awign and Gigforce.