Sequoia leads $10m round for India's Belong
Sequoia Capital India has led a $10 million Series B funding round for Bengaluru-based online recruitment platform provider Belong.
Existing investor Matrix Partners also participated. The capital will be used to accelerate product development and hire new talent across engineering, data science, enterprise sales and customer services.
Founded in 2014, Belong offers “outbound hiring” software that uses artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled analytics technology to support targeted and personalized recruitment procedures for corporate clients. Since mid-2015, the company claims its mid-market and enterprise customer base has doubled in size, while the number of offers generated by its platform is up 411% year-on-year. Services focus on automation of recruitment filtering processes, candidate engagement and market reporting.
“The team at Belong has demonstrated a relentless passion towards building a differentiated product that helps enterprises and growing companies alike in their toughest hiring challenges,” Gautam Mago, a managing director at Sequoia, said in a statement. “In a world where companies need to respond to market realities quickly, Belong's AI-driven outbound approach to helping businesses discover and hire top talent is a step in the right direction.”
Belong received a $4.7 million Series A investment from Matrix and Blume Ventures in 2015. Matrix also supported a seed round the prior year.
Indian recruitment services has been an active area for venture capital. Last July, Quikr, which claims to be India's largest classifieds platform, acquired Hiree, an online hiring platform backed by IDG Ventures. The following month, Brand Capital, an investment arm of The Times Group, invested about $19 million in Quikr.
Meanwhile, recruitment companies Kelly Services India and Temp Holdings have launched a $10 million VC fund that targetes human resources-focused start-ups. This coincided with a $15 million exit from staffing service company TeamLease by ICICI Venture.
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