Shortlist, a staffing and recruitment startup focused on India and East Africa, has closed a $2 million Series A round led by Blue Haven Initiative. The round also saw participation from "Compass Venture Capital, existing investor Zephyr Acorn, and several others" according to Paul Breloff, Shortlist's CEO.
This funding follows Shortlist's $1 million University Ventures led Seed round that it raised in September 2017 with participation from Zephyr Management, Spike Ventures, Samir Shah and Bodley Group. It also takes the startup's total funding raised todate to at least $3 million.
According to Paul, "this funding will allow us [to] build out our vision for how companies in Africa and India build their teams," Paul wrote. "We’re building Shortlist to be a scalable way to collect signals that really matter, like demonstrated skills, interests, aspirations, work style preferences, and motivation — and use them to match the right job seeker with the right company at the right time."
Also read: Kalon Venture Partners leads $1.5M Series A for SA startup Flow
Founded in 2016 by Matt Schnuck and Paul Breloff, the Mumbai headquartered recruitment startup has more than "more than 300 clients and 400,000+ job seekers".
"But we’re just getting started. There’s so much more we want to build to get to know candidates better — their passions, personalities, and potential — and to use that data to find them jobs they love," wrote Paul.
The startup is betting on filling the gaps that automation of the HR processes is leaving behind. "These days, most of the sound bites about HR tech champion artificial intelligence and machine learning as the chief protagonists of the revolution," it points out. Adding that "a lot of this innovation is missing something essential, and (nearly) all of it is built for markets other than ours."