How Incruiter saves companies time, money during remote recruitment

Post pandemic, companies, especially technology firms are looking at hiring talent from all available geographies. With flexible working model becomes the norm, remote hiring has been very popular. However, this process has come with its own set of risks. For instance, in video interview process, screening of right talent becomes a challenge. Moreover, in case of bulk hiring, conducting interviews of 1,000 of candidates require a lot of investment of manpower and money. Against this backdrop, Incruiter kind of companies have come up with technology-powered interview as a service solution that help screening of candidates faster and seamless.

This makes the hiring process faster and less costly for companies. In a conversation with the Bizz Buzz, CEO and Co-founder of Incruiter, Anil Agarwal said that the company has more than 300 large companies in technology and other segments as clients, which use their platform. Owing to the cost savings and faster process, companies are using the SaaS products of Incruiter. He said that the company also as a AI-platform wherein AI takes the interview of candidates instead of human beings. The market of video interview is going to grow at a faster pace in next five years, he added

Can you provide a brief overview about the operations of Incruiter? Please throw some light on the reasons behind setting up the company.

We started Incruiter in 2018. The reason behind setting up Incruiter was, Ritu Mathran- the cofounder of the company- went for an interview one of the companies in Bengaluru. However, there were no experts to take her interview though she was more than experience as a Chartered Accountant. That’s when the idea came to our mind that why not to provide interview as a solution and the company was set up. Then, in 2029, we released our product. However, due to Covid pandemic in 2020, everything came to a standstill. In 2021, companies adopted digital transformation in a significant way and the hiring in the IT industry surged. That’s when companies realised that they require a solution like this for interviewing candidates digitally. As hiring in big scale was going one, instances of cheating and fraud came to the fore. Our interview as a service product came in handy, which makes the interview process cheat-proof. Then in 2023, we saw AI (artificial intelligence) making deep inroads. So, we released our another product AI Interview Software which enable companies to deploy AI tool to take the interview than human beings.

How do Incruiter’s solutions solve the problems of companies in case of remote hiring? Can you give some perspective in this aspect?

There are three phases in case of recruitment. They are sourcing, screening and onboarding. We operate in the middle phase, which is screening. Usually what happens is that if there are 10 vacancies, companies will screen around 100 candidates for filling up those vacancies. So, companies may have to take 100 interviews. That’s where we come in. Companies outsource first round of interviews to us. Using our software solution, we conduct 100 interviews for them and give them a list of 20-25 short-listed candidates from which they choose 10 candidates. This way, we help companies to save 70-80 per cent of cost that is incurred on these interview process.

How technology is leveraged in screening of candidates? How fraudulent activities are restricted through your AI-powered solution? Please provide some perspective in this aspect.

Our AI-powered software is devised with various features that can detect anomalies during the interview process. For example, if the candidate moves from the interview screen to another screen, our platform can automatically detect it as the candidate may be trying to find answers from Google or other sources. Similarly, there are features like mobile phone detector, two person detector, and dual tone detector among others. In some way, we verify candidates to restrict impersonation problems. For instance, we capture candidate details from Aadhaar and verify it with the information provided. There are cases, where in some candidates are reluctant to provide Aadhaar authentication. In that case, we take the screenshots and give it to the company informing it that this is the candidate, which has appeared for the interview. So, the company can authenticate the credentials during the second round of interview.

There are six products released by Incruiter. Which is your star product and what are the new products you are currently working on?

We started with ‘Interview as a Service’ and that continues to be our hero product. We are the market leader in the ‘Interview as a Service’ space. AI Interview Software is doing very well and is increasingly witnessing rising adoption among users. I think, this product is going to be very popular in the coming months.

Large corporate houses like IT firms usually employ several staffing firms for recruitment process. Do you replace those staffing firms or complement their work?

We as a company work in the screening process. We are not into sourcing of candidates like staffing firms. We only conduct interviews. We are also not in the onboarding of candidates. We make the interview process and in turn, the hiring process faster. In that way, we are not replacing staffing firms. Rather, staffing firms are our clients. When they want to conduct the interview, they come to us. We engage with most reputed staffing firms of India.

Can you give a brief overview about your revenue model? Which are the geographies the company currently operating?

As a SaaS product, we charge clients per interview and per user. As far as geographical presence is concerned, we operate in Middle East, South East Asia, and the US. We are also opening our office in UAE. Definitely, we have a large presence in India. We have more than 300 clients across the world. Most of the large sized companies are our clients and use our platform to conduct interviews. As far as revenue growth is concerned, we have seen growth of 5X year-on-year basis. Last year, the growth was flat because IT hiring had been subdued. But we will be growing over the last fiscal.

How big is your team now? Are you planning to raise capital in the near future? What are your hiring plans?

We are around 60-65 people as of now, which has grown by 30 per cent in the last one year. We will increase our team to around 100-120 people in the next one year. Our technology team comprises 20-25 people now. We are profitable and doing good. So far, we are completely boot-strapped. We had raised some capital through debt funding. We are growing at a good pace.

This year, we are planning to raise external capital as we want to grow in major markets globally. This funding will help us in expanding our footprint. That is the reason that we are looking at raising capital in the next six months. Around $2 million-$3 million is the kind of capital, we are planning to raise. We have good enquiries from fund houses in terms of fund raising. As far as market size of video interview is concerned, the market size is very big and there is a lot of space to grow. Therefore, we see the market growing very fast in the next five years.