Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

WhistleTalk, a social recruiting company, today announced an investment of $400K by Hyderabad Angels. The investment was led by Hyderabad Angels member, Raghu Bathina.

Whistletalk is founded by Vinoo Chacko and Ajay Nema, both worked together at Citrix before starting their venture.

WhistleTalk is a referral hiring application that enables company employees and hiring managers to use their social networks to find the right talent for the right job. The company’s matching and virality engine ensures that right opportunities reach the best candidates at the earliest. As openings are referred by friends, even passive candidates are more likely to apply. Job seekers are further motivated because all applications are employee referred. For the company, getting qualified candidates who already know about their company and at a significantly lower cost makes eminent sense.

“Social recruiting is a huge global opportunity. Companies worldwide are struggling to attract good talent. Globally, we see a trend of smart companies leveraging the influence circles of their current employees to find future employees,” explained Raghu Bathina, a Hyderabad Angel and Director at WhistleTalk. “WhistleTalk is out to revolutionise the way organizations find talent,” he added.

Ajay Nema, Co-founder and CTO at WhistleTalk said, “Given a job description, WhistleTalk uses a highly scalable, distributed computing engine to search thousands of profiles in real time and recommend relevant applicants, reachable through the social network of each employee.”

“We like to invest in companies with great teams that are addressing real world problems with unique solutions,” stated Srini Koppolu, President of Hyderabad Angels. “We appreciate how the WhistleTalk team is taking an innovative approach, empowering employees and job seekers to improve referral hiring.”

“We are excited to have the support of investors like Hyderabad Angels. The willingness of these successful serial entrepreneurs, to mentor and to guide us has been priceless,” said Vinoo Chacko, an ISB Alumni, WhistleTalk Co-founder and CEO. “Everyone wins with WhistleTalk: employees earn a referral bonus from their respective  companies, applicants find access to hidden openings till now known only to current employees and organisations quickly hire the best talent. WhistleTalk was launched just 60 days ago and we are excited with the response from both companies and jobseekers to our solution.”

-Hitesh, vcBytes

Kaizen Private Equity LLC, India’s first private equity fund focused on $86 billion education sector in India is leading a Rs 24 crore or $4.6 million round in the Bangalore based Ace Creative Learning Private Limited.

ACE provides training and guidance to students preparing for various engineering and medical entrance examinations. It previously raised funds from Accel partners, Catamaran and few angel investors for its Series A round of investment, who will be funding for the current around as well. Kaizen will also be appointing a nominee on the board of the company.
Ace creative learning plans to expand beyond Karnataka and Kaizen Private Equity are supporting their growth plans. Ace has also shortlisted a few location to spread over the next couple of years. Masterkey Holdings, the Bangalore based boutique investment bank has been sole advisors to Ace learning.

Ace learning has been providing comprehensive training for the IITJEE, AIEEE, AIPMT, FMS and NTSE for more than 10 years since its inception in 1998. The company also offers an online platform for students to attend lectures and study at their homes.

Dr Ganpathy Sridhar, the founder of Ace creative learning obtained his B. Tech from IIT Kharagpur in 1989 and later completed his PhD from The Johns Hopkins University. Today, team Ace consists of 450 members including experienced faculty members who are graduates from the IIT, experienced retired professors from reputed institutes and doctorates from India & the US.A dynamic team of professional deliver high quality education across various teaching environment.
“With education as our focus, we have been looking for high-end companies with a differentiated edge. Ace has doubled its IIT JEE ranks and increased AIEEE ranks by 50 per cent last year, alongside ensuring students are also receiving a balanced preparation for their school board examinations. This success in ranks is because of the company’s ability to attract good students and more effective teaching methodology,” quoted Sandeep Aneja, Founder and Managing Director of Kaizen Management Advisors on joining hands with ace learning private limited.

In June 2011, Kaizen closed its maiden fund at Rs 400 crore. With a keen focus on education sector, it invested RS 25 crore ($4.5million) in Altus Learning pvt ltd, a company providing management and other service form playschools to K-12 segment.

Previously, Kaizen has invested in the corporate day care services firm Your Kids ‘R’ our kids (India) Pvt ltd. It also funded the distance education provider Universal training solutions (UTS) a few years ago. Ace creative learning is the fourth disclosed investment by this education focused investment company.

-Hitesh, vcBytes

Money-Wiazrds, an offline financial education provider has raised an investments from a Singapore based Tenshi Peak Ventures. Money-Wizards is Chennai based startup founded by two IIM-B alums – Venkatest Venkatesh Varadachari and Professor Thillai Rajan.  Money-Wizards aims to be global leader in world class financial literacy and money education.

Funds will be utilized in expanding the team and also to develop the online learning platform which can scale in rapidly.

Money-Wizards offers finance courses and caters to diverse groups, including school and college students, working adults and corporate houses. It has already partnered with 15 schools in Chennai, Bangalore and Singapore.

Customer Pain Points in Financial Space:

• Even as financial products and services get more and more complex, most people do not understand enough “finance” to take informed decisions.
• Currently it is the salesmen and intermediaries who are doing the “educating”. Customers are relying on their financial barbers to tell them if they need a hair cut!
• The products that are shoved down the customer’s throat are not necessarily the ones that benefit him.

Mettl, an online assessment portal based out of Gurgaon has raised $4M led by IndoUS Venture Partners.  Existing investors also participated in this series A round. Mettl had raised angel funding from Blume Ventures, Sasha Mirchandani, Naveen Tiwari of Inmobi and others.  Vani Kola, Managing Partner of IndoUS will take a board seat at Mettl.

Mettl was founded in 2010 by Ketan Kapoor, an IIT Rourkee and Tonmoy Shingal, an IIT Kanpur alum.  Mettl is an online assessment and testing platform to measure, analyze and improve people skills. It is ideal for companies who want to run multi-competency assessments for their prospective hires or existing employees.

Mettl has been primarily focusing on B2B market and have clients like Cleartrip.com, Monster.com, InMobi, Comviva, The Times Group, Myntra.com and iXiGO. Mettl provides platform to companies where in they can customize the assessment test as per their will and judge the candidate merit. Mettl can also open its platform for B2C segment and can offer tests like BrainBench.

Online assessment space is getting global attention, InterviewStreet, another Indian startup is also in this space but primarily targeting US based companies. As per Vani Kola, “Mettl is scalable and applicable for global companies. It is poised to become a global player and continue to expand the use cases of their strong proprietary technology to multiple business applications,”.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Mobile application developer - Twist Mobile, an Indore based mobile apps company has raised undisclosed amount in series A round from  Matrix Partners.  Rishi Navani and Vikram Vaidyanathan  from Matrix partners would join the board of Twist Mobile. Primarily investments will be utilized in promoting the apps and expanding in International location.

Virat Khutal founded Twist Mobile in 2009 and worked with telecom operators but failed to generate traction, Twist Mobile tasted success in its developed apps on smart phones. Twist Mobile apps are centered towards Nokia app store -Ovi, and Dragger is their most popular apps.  The company has reached 73 Mn downloads.

Twist Mobile is planning to set up office in Vietnam with about 30 employees. The company plans to develop apps and content delivery for low end devices like Symbian series 40 and developing city based applications with Local Content for rural India.

Indian mobile app developers are attracting a lot of investor interest.

Recently, Bangalore based United Mobile Apps has raised $1Mn Series A funding from Mumbai Angels. Last year, One97 Mobility Fund invested in Kerala based mobile app developer Dexetra Software Solutions Pvt Ltd.Onward Mobility Solution Private Limited raised Rs.18 Cr series A funding from IndoUS Venture Partners and Qualcomm Ventures.

Matrix Partners had earlier invested in Verse.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com