Kochi: Having worked with various IT majors for over 15 years, Deepu Xavier and Jyothis KS have seen first-hand the challenges companies face when it comes to recruiting. Therefore, when they decided to take the entrepreneurial route, they knew what to sell – a platform that makes the mundane recruiting task easier. Thus was born Zappyhire. The Kochi-based startup, founded by the duo in 2018, helps more than 50 clients with its AI-powered recruitment platform. After successfully closing two funding rounds, the company appears to be on a promising path with an ambitious expansion plan.
It all started with Infy
Jyothis, from Kolenchery in Ernakulam district, and Xavier, from Cherthala in Alappuzha, met in 2010 while at Infosys. The two later parted ways as they both took on bigger roles in other companies but never failed to stay in touch. The two friends embark on entrepreneurship with their experience in the fields of AI, finance and management. Jyothis, who left Infosys for Cognizant, worked as COO of CogniCor, a conversational AI company based in Spain, before founding Zappyhire. Xavier, after his stints at Infosys and Bosch, was the main product manager of the Java programming language at Oracle, before his start-up debut.
“When we were working in our old companies, a common challenge we observed was with recruitment. Companies spend a huge amount of time on the endless recruitment process. We found a huge scope for automation in the region. “, Xavier told Onmanorama about the origins of their company.
Zappyhire had humble beginnings with just three employees, including the co-founders. Now it is a team of 46 members. The company is based at the Kerala Starup Mission campus in Kalamassery and now follows the remote work culture. The company found its initial fortune through its association with the Federal Bank which continues to be strong. A testimonial from the banking major indicates that by using Zappyhire, she was able to hire approximately 1,100 candidates across the country with a three-member team in three months. The Company’s customer base includes small financial bank ESAF, Baby Memorial Hospital, Hedge and CareStack.
What does Zappyhire do?
The company follows the software as a service (SaaS) model and derives its revenue from subscription. It offers a full-fledged AI-powered platform that helps its clients ease the hiring process, saving resources and time. The Zappyhire platform automates a company’s entire recruiting process – from job application creation to offer letter posting and onboarding – by adapting to its existing processes.
The platform automatically screens and ranks candidates from hundreds of applications using a semantic resume parser and AI-enabled video interview. The platform with its database analyzes a candidate’s behavioral and linguistic skills and the likelihood of joining and staying in a company. It also performs robotic interviews in the initial hiring phases.
“We never eliminate any candidate. The final decision regarding recruitment rests solely with the recruiter. We provide maximum data points on a candidate, making it easy for a recruiter. The system helps the recruiter from writing a job description to sending the offer letter to a potential employee. It can also detect a candidate’s willingness or reluctance to accept a job based on their post-offer commitment. Each company can also configure our system without compromising their recruiting practices,” explained Xavier.
According to its founders, the Zappyhire platform is useful not only for recruiters but also for business leaders as well as candidates. It helps business leaders and C-levels track their hiring performance, get organization-specific insights and recommendations, and improve their hiring ROI. It provides candidates with transparent communication and updates throughout the recruitment process.
Pandemic gain
Zappyhire falls into this category of companies that have taken advantage of the Covid-induced lockdown. “Before Covid, digital hiring or recruiting automation was just a ‘nice to have’ feature for businesses. With the pandemic lockdown, it’s become a ‘must have’, recruiting digital becoming the new norm. It helped us gain acceptance,” Xavier said.
Financing and expansion
Last November, the company raised Rs 3.71 crores from Kerala Angel Network and Alex K Babu, Founder and CMD, Hedge Finance Limited. The round also saw the participation of strategic investors such as Shihab Muhammed, ex-co-founder of Freshservice (Freshdesk), Navas Meeran, president, Eastern Condiments Pvt. Ltd, Dr MI Sahadulla, Rajesh Nair – EY Associate Partner, Chairman and Managing Director, KIMS, and K Paul Thomas, Founder of ESAF Social Enterprise Group. The funding round saw more than four Zappyhire clients, including ESAF and Hedge Securities, turn into investors. Xavier said it reassured their confidence in the company’s potential in the area of recruiting automation. In January 2020, the company raised almost Rs 70 lakh.
It has started the process for the next funding round as part of its plan to expand business in the United States by next year.
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