Indian HR Tech & AI startup Hyreo has successfully closed its Pre-series A funding from marquee investors led by Callapina Capital with participation from Anas Rahman Junaid, Konglo Ventures, Raveendranath Kamath, Nat Natraj and other investors from Silicon Valley. 

Speaking on the investment, Anas Rahman Junaid, Founder & Managing Director, Hurun India, said, “HR Tech is fast evolving as a preferred sector of focus given the need to automate and build efficiencies amidst high volume and lower budgets. The opportunity globally is $30 billion and the new normal has clearly accelerated the need to address the same. We are extremely happy to support Hyreo in their mission to automate the process through technology and deep industry understanding.” 

Co-founded by Arun Satyan, Mahesh Raju and Sreenath N in 2017, Hyreo seeks to simplify recruitment process and improve candidate experience using AI. Hyreo offers a customised candidate relationship management (CRM) tool with deep conversational AI capabilities, to enterprises and large customers across technology, IT, banking and financial services domains. It is designed to transform recruitment process into a highly engaging experience for candidates and recruiting teams. Back in 2018, Hyreo has also been part of the People Matters TechHR Startup Program. 

Hyreo value proposition for its clients would be enhanced employer brand, consistent candidate experience, improved offer conversion, lower cost and higher quality of hires. It plans to use the proceeds from the latest round of funding to fuel its international expansion as well as beefing up its product development teams.

Arun Satyan, Co-founder & CEO, Hyreo, shared, “This round will push us to the next stage of growth. We have, since our inception, built a highly capable and relevant product which has a global appeal. It is time for Hyreo to start looking at larger international markets including the US and other APAC regions."

"With the conclusion of this funding round and onboarding marquee investors, we are setting out to achieve our Hyreo 2.0 vision in the next few months," he added. 

Headquartered in Trivandrum, Kerala, Hyreo comprises of a 25 member team. The company expects to increase its headcount by 100% in the next one year. The company presently caters to more than 40 of clients across India, US and S Asia. 

What drew Raveendranath Kamath, Founder, Next Education and a seasoned investor closer to Hyreo is: 'The strong value proposition to the enterprise customers'. "Hyreo founding team is strong with good functional and technical expertise and I have faith in the team to deliver a world class solution," he said. 

Intelligent chatbots and the innovations in the recruitment tech space are enabling HR leaders to not just streamline their hiring process but also enhance candidate experience. 

Vinod Jose, Founder, Konglo Ventures said "I first met Arun in 2017 and what struck me was his laser focus on solving the pain points in the HR tech space. Such mission driven founders are rare to find and they will go on to create a paradigm shift in the space they operate in."

With Candidate Experience Management being an emerging and increasingly strategic topic for HR Heads around the world to manage, Hyreo has a great opportunity to grow its business. However, as the India-based startup expands its footprints in the APAC region it also has to tackle with the increasing competition. The recruitment space is dominated by other solutions like ADP Workforce Now, Lever, BambooHR, Greenhouse, and SAP SuccessFactors, among others. Hyreo also has to compete with other emerging players including Skillate, Recruitee, Upsider, and HelloAstra. 

To tackle the competition in and stay ahead of the curve, going forward, Hyreo aims to expand its service offerings to offer additional capabilities around sourcing automation, effective talent communities and talent marketing tools.