PC: Zee Business
Bengaluru headquartered leading blue-collar recruitment platform Vahan.ai recently announced raising $10 million as part of Series B round, led by Khosla Ventures. Notable names, including Y Combinator, Gaingels, and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, also made their participation in the rounds.
This is the second consecutive funding success for Vahan.ai after it picked up its Series A round in September 2021, at which time the startup raked in $8 million, led by Khosla Ventures. Other significant strategic developments from Vahan.ai also involved a collaboration with Airtel’s Startup Accelerator Program in 2019, in which the acquisition by the telecom behemoth increased its stake in the firm to 8.82%, further raising its industry presence and strategic partnerships.
Fresh capital will energize Vahan.ai’s push to upgrade its AI recruitment technology so it can support eight major Indian languages. The AI recruiter has conducted interviews in English and Hindi alone up till now, but the platform hopes to expand into other areas – such as manufacturing and retail, new channels of growth and expansion, respectively.
Since its inception in 2016, Vahan.ai has assisted the recruitment of over 500,000 workers in more than 480 cities by associating with companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, Zepto, Blinkit, Amazon, Rapido, and Uber. As it has been maintaining a great recruitment record of over 25,000 recruits per month, Vahan.ai has proven the fact that they can effectively smoothen out this recruitment process at reduced costs and turnaround time for employers.
In the fiscal year ended March 2023, operating revenues of Vahan.ai were at Rs 29.7 crore with a loss of Rs 17.71 crore. The company expects significant growth in the next fiscal year. Hence, it projects an expansion of more than 2 times in FY25, an ambitious growth trajectory and market potential.
During the same period, Vahan.ai has been competing with industry majors like Baba Jobs and Aasaan Jobs within the blue-collar recruitment segment. Later, the merged unit of Baba Jobs was merged with Quikr and OLX. Apna, funded by Tiger Global and created a unicorn in 2021, represented the new pivot in blue-collar recruitment post-pandemic.
That the latest round of funding and strategic partnerships gives the company a leg up as Vahan.ai extends its innovative offerings positions the company well for continued growth in a dynamic market place for blue-collar recruitment. Vahan.ai is all set to reorient the recruitment landscape and influence impactful solutions for both job seekers and employers alike through advanced AI technology with expanded language capabilities and new industry verticals.
