Naukri.com, Google Jobs, Facebook Jobs and LinkedIn are the biggest players in the Recruitment Industry in India. While Recruitment Startups also face tough competition from ~23,000 Traditional Recruitment Agencies in India, some Recruitment Companies have carved a niche for themselves. 

In a competitive industry like Recruitment, some curious minds are trying to find out if a smarter way to recruit exists for companies. The beneficiaries of the e-commerce wave in India were the customers and here in Recruitment would be the millions of Job-seekers & Companies. Here I will be talking about some successful Indian Recruitment startups which have evolved through time and have created a place in the Indian market. The Recruitment industry is already touching over $400 billion worldwide & the sheer pedigree of the Indian entrepreneurs in the HR Space makes us believe that the next unicorn might just come from the Recruitment Industry. 

Selection Criteria

: Ideally, this should be based on Client Experience, User (Job-seeker Experience), Client Retention, User Retention, no. of Jobs, no. of candidates placed etc. However, these parameters can be difficult to measure & sometimes not available in the public domain. We have, therefore for the sake of simplicity chose Alexa World Rank of the site to rank the startups in the descending order. Feel free to share your views on alternate measurement metrics to update the list below

Top 10 Recruitment Startups in India

1. IIMJOBS and HIRIST

Both startups were founded by an IIM Indore Alumnus Tarun Matta in the year 2008(IIMJOBS ) and 2010( HIRIST). Matta is himself a Math geek, Enterprise Sales Specialist, and has a rich experience in the field of technology, recruiting and IT services industry. Before establishing Hirist, Matta worked with organizations like CSC, Neilsoft, and Alcatel Lucent in the capacity of a Business Analyst and Sales Manager post. This startup acted as the bridge between the recruiter and the candidate by providing free posts. It has over 5 lakh active users registered and featuring some of the best jobs in Banking and Finance, Consulting, Research and Analytics, Sales and Marketing, HR, IT and Operations, BPO, and Legal sectors. It is the largest recruitment site focused on the premium segment of the market working with about 350 companies such as Hindustan Unilever, ICICI Bank, Credit Suisse, IBM, Accenture, Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Amazon, Zomato and helps them recruit great managerial and tech talent with ease. The company was acquired by Naukri.com in 2019. Alexa world rank of HIRIST is 12,156 and is 9,247 for IIMJOBS

2. CUTSHORT

Cutshort floated in the year 2015 by Nikunj Verma. It is one of the HR Tech startups which is leveraging Artificial Intelligence to change India’s $25 Billion recruitment industry. It uses strong matchmaking algorithms, with trusted networks and specific modulated workflow. With its SaaS platform, quality talent is searched in a fraction of seconds. Alike Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, CutShort also offers its AI-driven professional assistant by the name Voila, which makes the entire hiring process far more smooth. Alexa world rank is 2,011 for CUTSHORT

3. METTL

Mettl’s journey started in 2009 when its Co-founders Ketan Kapoor (IIT Roorkee & IIM Calcutta) and Tonmoy Shingal(IIT Kanpur & IIM Bangalore) landed with a common vision of leveraging technology for hiring practices in Indian and global firms. It offers recruitment assessment, programming tests, psychometric tests, aptitude tests, vocational skills assessment, remote proctoring, a pre-built test library of 200-plus tests along with an interview app, deep analytics in performance management, and a certification providing platform. It comes as a cumulative platform of training with hiring. It is blanketed across 100 countries with more than 1800 clients worldwide, and Gurugram-based headquarter. Mettl was acquired by Mercer in 2019. Alexa world rank for Mettl is 6,871

4. Instahyre

Instahyre was initiated in February 2020 by a prodigy pair – Aditya Rajgarhia and Sahil Gupta. They did their higher education from Stanford University and IIT Ropad respectively. It has come with an extremely surprising thought of hiring via AI. It lacks any filter feature, rather has come up with a curated list for the recruiters to hire. This helps the recruiter to attain quality service. It even comes with a secure and relaxing facility of zero spamming emails and genuine jobs. It has gained a lot of goodwill in a limited period of time by big tycoons like Amazon, Walmart, Uber, PayPal, etc. Alexa world rank for instahyre is 14,710

5. AASAAN JOBS

It started in the year 2014 by Dinesh Goel(IIT Bombay alumnus) and was recently acquired by OLX. It is an online marketplace for entry-level and blue-collar jobs,  provides a two-way matchmaking algorithm to eventually meet both ended expectations. Dinesh Goel was inspired by the unregulated Indian recruitment market where the company saw a massive market opportunity. Aasaanjobs considers its USP to be its technology-backed solutions, multilingual website, and ability to reach out and engage with candidates from diverse backgrounds, including those still using feature phones. Alexa world rank for AASAAN JOBS is 39,906

6. ZIGSAW 

Zigsaw Consultancy Services was found in the year 2015 by IIT Guwahati Alumnus Vaibhav Chouhan. Currently operational in Rajasthan, MP & Gujarat ONLY, Zigsaw offers a traditional staffing agency support to companies. For Job-seekers, it offers a Hyperlocal Job-search experience with its social media communities. Having gone through multiple product pivots, Zigsaw aspires to leverage gamification to drive engagement of Job-seekers at zigsaw.in  It is a platform of pre-evaluated profiles that HR’s can leverage to speed up their hiring process. Alexa World Rank of ZIGSAW is 1,09,868

7. BELONG

It was launched in 2014 by BITS Pilani alumnus Vijay Sharma. It is a predictive hiring platform to discover and engage high-impact talent through predictive analytics. At present, Belong works with Amazon, Reliance Jio, Cisco, and ThoughtWorks which are giants in the market. Belong’s Machine Learning algorithms are excellent and helps the businesses unearth and target high-fit talent, engage candidates through personalized interactions, and enhance hiring cycles at scale. Last year, Belong raised Series B funding of $10 million led by Sequoia Capital, and its client portfolio incorporates Ola, InMobi, Myntra, and many other market tycoons. Alexa rank of BELONG is 1,35,283

8. HIRETALE

In the year 2013, Vivek Jain, an IIT Guwahati Alumnus started Hiretale from Jaipur, Rajasthan. It is a technology startup modifying the whole recruitment eco-system by its innovative ideas in connection establishment. It is teamed up by passionate and experienced skills from IIMs/IITs and NITs apart from recruitment specialists who understand the requirements of employers & candidates equally well. Alexa world rank of HIRETALE is 1,52,556

9. JOBSQUARE

Its founder is Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah. It aims to be the number one platform of choice that connects recruiters and job seekers in real-time and eliminates the ambiguity associated with the traditional online job seeking scenario, resulting in faster jobs and a simplified recruitment process. Alexa world rank ofJOBSQUARE is 2,85,538 

10. CAJOBPORTAL

Sonia Singhal and her husband Anurag Singhal(IIM Ahmedabad alumni) came up with an idea of running a recruitment startup purely for CAs. This couple is themselves a CA. They were the very first to come up with this idea in 2013. It is interesting to know that it is an all-women team, who works from their respective homes, on a collaborative workspace, enabling real-time monitoring and flawless integration of efforts. It follows a value proposition, in terms of domain expertise, online presence, and service delivery levels. These include the top 50 percent of BSE-30 companies including the appreciations of Unilever, Asian Paints, Goldman Sachs, and HDFC. The portal is also recognized under the ‘Startup India Scheme’ by DIPP.” Alexa world rank of CAJOBPORTAL is 7,05,391

To wrap up, I would like to say that every problem comes with a solution. One just needs a correct way to go through. The same thing applies to find a job, there are plenty of recruitment startups present in India. Just stay tuned and get yourself a dream job.

What do you think about the above list? Do let me know your thoughts in the comments below!!