Guwahati-based Vantage Circle has garnered more than a million corporate loyalty users

Vantage Circle is a cloud-based employee benefit and engagement platform for companies to engage and encourage employees through privileges, rewards, and engagement programmes. 

At a glance

Startup: Vantage Circle

Founders: Anjan Pathak and Partha Neog

Year it was founded: 2010

Where it is based: Delhi, Guwahati

The problem it solves: Cloud-based employee benefits and engagement platform for corporates

Sector: HR

Funding raised: Bootstrapped 

Vantage Circle is a one-stop-shop for employee engagement programmes. From shopping benefits to child care programmes, corporates can avail a wide range of employee benefit programmes and employee engagement activities. Vantage Circle's module includes Vantage Global Rewards, Vantage Social Recognition, Vantage Deals, Vantage Fit for employee health and wellness, and Vantage Pulse for employee sentiment analysis.

Anjan Pathak and Partha Neog are friends from school who wanted to start a company of their own. In 2010, while discussing startup ideas, the space of discount sites which were mushrooming then, interested them. They decided to start Vantage Circle to cater to the corporate sector, wanting to create a niche, as there were many other players in this space catering to a general audience.

They started by offering corporate offers for employees. As they grew, they realised that there was a potential in having one integrated platform for employee engagement, which led to Rewards and Recognition, Vantage Fit, and their latest product, Vantage Pulse for employee sentiment analysis. The founders say that more of their product inputs have come from end users.

The startup claims to be one of India’s largest employee engagement platform, with more than a million corporate employees. Vantage Circle manages corporate benefits solutions for some of the biggest corporates in India including Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, Cognizant, EXL, GE, HCL, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Wipro among others.

Vantage Circle’s main revenue source is from brands which want to reach out to verified corporate audience. They also charge a fee to corporates that want to use their advanced modules like Fit, Pulse and analytics dashboard, but their basic modules are free. Vantage Circle has an annual revenue of Rs 6 crore and they expect to touch Rs 10 crore by the end of this year. The startup is bootstrapped with support from friends and family.

Going ahead, Vantage Circle wants to capture a bigger market among mid-segment companies in India as well as go global as they feel the market is ripe for a product like theirs. Co-founder Anjan says, “On the technology front, our future plan is to make the platform easy to use and scale globally. We also want to achieve operational efficiency by automating a lot of tasks we do. We are operating on a remote model where most of our employee strength is based in Guwahati, Assam, and finding skilled resource is always a challenge for us. Recruiting, training and keeping our colleagues motivated is probably one of the biggest challenges I face every day.”