Mumbai Angels backed TalentBridge has 90,000 registered users for its iLAP platform
TalentBridge Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is Bangalore based company which provides a cloud technology infrastructure focusing on employability and hiring solutions. The objective is to connect individual learners and institutions of higher learning with the corporate world. And they do this by offering a cloud-based integrated Learning, Assessment and Placement (iLAP) platform.The company was founded in 2008 by an experienced team with four people at the helm - Gaurav Shukla, Sandeep Yuwanti, Abhimanyu Jha, and Nitin Shrivastava. TalentBridge aims at leveraging technology to deliver “Integrated Career Management (ICM)” through its iLAP platform.
We got in touch with the team to learn more:
YS: Where did the idea for TalentBridge germinate?
TB: We all come from smaller towns of India and thus were aware of the challenges faced by students from smaller towns and remote locations when it came to employability skills and exposure to corporate world. Via older connections and colleagues, the four of us got involved full time by 2009 and started up. TalentBridge was officially incorporated in the later part of 2008 with seed capital of Rs. 30 lakh from friends and family.
YS: How has the journey been since inception and what is the core focus?
TB: After years of research, the Graduate Certificate in Corporate Readiness (GCCR) was developed which is a copyrighted program from TalentBridge to help students from smaller towns prepare for interviews and a corporate career. When TalentBridge began its operations, it was an offline training model wherein it ran retail training centers and deployed trainers for institutional engagements to offer GCCR. However the team soon realized the limitations of scaling up with brick and mortar model. Based on the lesson, TalentBridge started developing an integrated learning, assessment and placement platform for students.
On this iLAP platform, students/learners can create and manage resume, learn online using e-learning modules, practice tools on Aptitude (more than 1.7 million questions on 40+ categories and 9 levels of toughness), assess Voice Quality, practice Mock-Interview (for 35 different education streams), test Written English skills, check psychometric profile (Indigenously built) and use Online Remote Recruitment system for employment assistance. Currently more than 90,000 registered users use the platform.
Creation of technology platform was inevitable step; in India employability is bigger problem than employment and corporates are looking for best of the lot. If we offer uniform input to students even as a part of couple of interaction, the understanding of students would not be uniform. But if there was an opportunity to access the inputs unlimited number of times, students can attain the near uniformity in understanding. The objective of TalentBridge's integrated platform (iLAP) is to arrive at uniformity.
TalentBridge platform helps educational institutions to monitor learning, assessment and placement, and measure the development of students in areas of employability.
YS: How big is the team at the present? How has the company been financed?
TB: Currently, the team comprises 22 odd committed individuals working for technology platform development, Institutional & Corporate Sales, Marketing and HR & Admin.
TalentBridge was started with a seed capital of Rs. 30 lakh in 2008. A year and a half later, we received funds from investors, Mumbai Angels to scale up the operations. Another round of funds were raised in 2012 to focus on building a world technology platform as the company focused shifted to leveraging technology to further its vision.
YS: What is the revenue model?
TB: TalentBridge engages three key stakeholders students, educational institutions and corporates.
Individual students/learners can visit TalentBridge platform to enroll in its CampusMentor program (online) by paying online.
The engagement with educational institutions is institutional wherein an access of TalentBridge platform is given to institute with one Monitoring license and a number of user licenses each for number of students enrolled. Alternately, an instance of TalentBridge platform is integrated to colleges’ IT infrastructure [Portal/platform/website] offering Platform As A Service [PaaS]. The corporates are offered screening and hiring solutions to optimize their hiring costs.
YS: What is the vision?
TB: Given the issues India confronts, where more than 2/3rd of the population is less than 25 years of age. India is very unlikely to learn through the classroom going forward owing to the limited infrastructure in place. The young India is going to learn in the online way and for that government has put lot many things in place or in process of putting things across. Technology is a great enabler and can reach anybody/everybody in future. TalentBridge wants to make education and hiring landscape horizontal and plans to create online innovative tools and applications for learners and users of its platform which can be accessed using mobiles/tablets apart from Laptops/PCs. TalentBridge's vision is to become a technology infrastructure provider to learners, education institutions and corporates enabling all the stakeholders to interact for learning, assessments and employment.
Website: TalentBridge
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