Recruitment firm Belong raises $10 million from Sequoia, others

BENGALURU: Recruitment startup Belong, which helps companies hire people using technology, has raised $10 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India to expand its client base and improve its product. Existing investor Matrix Partners also participated in the round.

Started in 2014, Belong, which counts Cisco, Amazon, UnitedHealth Group, EY and Thoughtworks among its 80-plus clients, had raised $5 million from Matrix, Blume Ventures and others in June 2015. The company claims to have doubled its midmarket and enterprise customers, since its first fund-raise in June 2015.

“We now have clear validation that our product is working,” Belong CEO Vijay Sharma said. “Talented candidates today are overwhelmed by the ‘spray-andpray’ tactics of traditional recruiting. Not only does it annoy them, but it also leads to poor engagement and conversions for recruiters. We’re still largely focused on technology hiring, but we’re also expanding into sales and marketing hiring.”

Along with the funding, Gautam Mago, MD at Sequoia Capital India, has joined Belong’s Board, which includes Matrix MD Tarun Davda and Raju Reddy, founder of IT services company Sierra Atlantic.

Belong also launched a new product called BelongExperts, a sort of marketplace of recruiters. BelongExperts connects companies with specialist recruiters and also connects them directly with candidates for niche roles. The product is currently used by some 20 companies, including cab hailing service Uber and LendingKart, an online loan platform. Belong’s core product that is used by companies to directly recruit employees is called BelongHire.

Belong has 85 employees and expects to add another 15 or so over the next 18 months.

The recruitment space has seen some churn in the past 18 months. In August 2015, online recruitment start-up TalentPad decided to shut shop after being in business for barely 18 months. Last July, online classifieds platform Quikr bought Hiree, another recruitment startup in a fire sale after the latter was forced to cut a large part of its workforce because of lack of funds.