Skills verification startup, Indorse has raised $6.5 Mn in the latest round of funding from Brand Capital, the ad-for-equity investment arm of The Times Group. The funding includes an initial investment of $2 Mn as a convertible note, with a valuation of $15 Mn, with the option of a further tranche of $4.5 Mn.

Gaurang Torvekar, CEO and Co-Founder of Indorse, shared that the raised money will help Indorse to build brand and become a major dependable source for employers seeking candidates with the right skills in India and South-East Asia coding skills market.

Founded in 2017, in Singapore, Indorse uses blockchain-powered platform to assess and verify skills, expertise, and achievements of candidates searching for new job roles, with an initial focus on the coding segment.

Until now, Indorse has worked with both small and large tech companies and has helped them find suitable talent. Most recently, it has helped South-East Asia’s ride-hailing firm, Grab by conducting a tech recruitment event to assess coding and data science candidates for. Indorse claims to have assessed over 2,000 tech candidates and 7,000 code reviews, within six months.

“We are raising the bar in terms of quality appraisal of tech talent, while substantially reducing the direct and indirect costs of the hiring process. Candidates can benefit from ‘indorsement’ by proving they can do the job they’re applying for — regardless of their CV’s content," said Torvekar. 

While blockchain holds so much potential, not many have been able to utilize it in the HR tech space. There are a few emerging startups like Indorse which are using the technology for aspects like skills verification, background verification, among others. 

Indorse was started by Gaurang Torvekar, Avadhoot Kulkarni, David Moskowitz, and Dipesh Sukhani, and since its inception it has raised money quite a few times. 

In 2017, Indorse completed a funding round, which reached $9 Mn, allowing the team to focus on building a working product. Before that, UK's investment and advisory firm, Coinsilium Group, also made seed investment of S$450,000 for a 10 percent equity stake in the business.

While Indorse’s focus so far has been on the Southeast Asia market, it will now be looking to expand in India as well. In fact, it plans to use the recently raised money to expand and build its business in India. 

How Indorse positions its skills verification platform, in a market which is still maturing is to look forward to.