Singapore HR platform Glints raises $50m Series D
DCM Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital, and listed Japanese human resources business Persol Holdings have led a USD 50m Series D round for Glints, a Southeast Asia-focused recruitment and career development platform.
Additional commitments came from Endeavor Catalyst, an investment firm chaired by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and from existing investors Monk’s Hill Ventures, Fresco Capital and Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart.
It comes 16 months after a USD 22.5m Series C led by Persol and featuring Fresco, MindWorks Capital, Monk’s Hill, and Wavemaker Partners, according to AVCJ Research. Prior to that, Glints raised around USD 10m across three rounds from the likes of 500 Global, East Ventures, Infocomm Investments, Vine Capital, SPH Ventures, Gobi Partners, and Golden Equator Capital.
Founded in 2013, the company has a network of more than 3m individuals – in Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan – and 50,000 organisations. It works with the likes of AIA, Ikea, GetGo, KKday, and Gameloft.
Glints covers recruitment, remote talent management, a searchable and trackable jobseeker database, career development training, and a career-focused Q&A forum. It has seen rapid growth in cross-border remote work management as employers shift to a borderless mindset and look to hire more in Southeast Asia. Cross-border job opportunities have risen 11x in the past two years.
Glints claims positive contribution margins across all business units, with Indonesia and Vietnam generating profit. Overall revenue and gross profit are growing 2.5x year-on-year. There have been triple-digit percentage increases in revenue in the past four years on the back of ecosystem growth.
The new capital will be used to expand the company’s talent supply base into the Philippines and build out its employer demand base globally. There are also plans to augment product and technology teams with a view to broadening resources for talent development.
“Glints is at the forefront of the future of talent recruitment. Today's professionals are becoming more open to remote working and employers searching for the right talent at the right cost
have become flexible in where they find the talent,” said Xiaoyin Zhang, founding partner of Lavender Hill, who is joining the company’s board alongside DCM’s Ramon Zeng.
“Glints has been swift in anticipating future work needs and quick in the execution to address such needs.”
Lavender Hill makes growth-stage investments in technology and technology-enabled companies in China and Southeast Asia, focusing on the consumer and enterprise services sectors. Zhang established the firm in 2017 after retiring from Goldman Sachs, where she served as head of China technology, media, and telecom (TMT) investment banking.
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