There is no shortage of recruitment platforms on the web. But looking for a job is still a nightmare; employers too, are flooded with resumes and finding the right talent at the right time is a dream shot. While multiple social and referral hiring companies are trying to solve this problem, a Singapore based startup LetsCatchup is changing the Indian recruitment Industry by leveraging the power of alumni networks.
The company is backed by Asia’s No.1 business accelerator JFDI Asia, which has invested around $200, 000 in cash and support. The startup went through a rigorous four-month accelerator program; concluded with a grand demo day last month, which was attended by over 100 investor groups from South East Asia.
“We have worked with over 50 startups in last 5 years;LetsCatchup has checked all the boxes for building a successful company. With an experienced team and unique business proposition, they clearly excelled in our program.” said, ChiKai Huang, JFDI program Manager.
Conventional recruitment portals are mostly job listings based, where hundreds of job seekers compete for one post. This also troubles the employers with huge time and money spent on shortlisting of candidates. LetsCatchup solves this problem with their unique referral-matching engine, explained Vinay Pahlajani, CEO of LetsCATCHUP:
“Job seekers spend lot of time in finding the right connections and opportunities. We have developed an engine, which automatically sends them matching opportunities from companies where their peers or seniors are working. They don’t have to visit multiple job boards, if there is a matching job- it will come directly to their inbox.”
LetsCATCHUP directly connects job seekers with Industry Insiders to get career advice and job referrals. Every application goes through an internal connection, which ensures faster and better response; at the same time the employers get short-listed and verified resumes through existing employees.
The platform leverages college alumni communities to maintain the quality of referrals and is only open for graduates of selected premier Indian Colleges like IIT’s and IIM’s right now. “We are adding new colleges with invitations only; there are 131 colleges in our waitlist already and we plan to open the network by end of this year. Going forward, we’ll expand to company and Industry based networks,” added co-founder, Ruchin Chaudhary.
About the Team:
LetsCATCHUP founders, Vinay Pahlajani and Ruchin Chaudhary are serial entrepreneurs and IIT alumni. They believe in the power of networking for recruitments and have been hiring through referrals for over 10 years. They realized that the process is still very unorganized and decided to take it online.
The startup has already bagged angel investment and is in talks with VC’s to raise a seed round to scale their team and traction. You can follow their updates through the Facebook page www.facebook.com/letscatchup or through the twitter handle @lets_catchup