How UniHyr is using technology to streamline and solve issues in hiring processes in companies

Gurugram-based UniHyr uses technology in HR processes to simplify hiring for organisations.

Startup: UniHyr

Founders: Nisheeth Kumar, Avijit Shastri

Year it was founded: 2016

Where is it based: Gurugram

The problem it solves: Simplifying hiring process for organisations using technology

Sector: Corporate

Funding raised: Undisclosed funding from India and Singapore-based angel investors

Nisheeth Kumar believes that in many Indian organisations hiring is looked at as an administrative activity, while top organisations around the world see it as a differentiator and as a competitive advantage that enables them to attract, hire, and retain top talent.

Keeping this in mind, Gurugram-based UniHyr, founded by Nisheeth in 2016, aims to solve the 'the hiring problem' using innovative technology and business models. With hiring being a complex activity with several challenges along the hiring value chain, it leads to longer hiring time and higher talent acquisition costs.

Nisheeth says,

Additionally, there are budget constraints with respect to the cost of hiring that needs to be controlled. The space has witnessed several technology interventions in pockets that solve part of the problem. Moreover, current systems demand a significant amount of change management resulting in lower adoption rates.

UniHyr’s product suite is an integrated recruitment management system with a well-designed product that is embedded in the user’s workflow. This results in minimal change management and higher adoption.

The founding team approached a few professionals from the HR industry for seed funding. "Once seasoned HR leaders endorsed the idea and agreed to invest, it paved the way for other angels from India and Singapore to participate," Nisheeth adds.

How did it start?

After quitting Jabong, during his early days of entrepreneurship, Nisheeth was advising several ecommerce firms and helping them fine-tune their business models, systems and processes.

During this phase, Nisheeth, who did not have any HR background, got a first-hand exposure of the recruitment industry, and he observed several inefficiencies in the way organisations engage with recruitment firms. He felt that technology can be leveraged to streamline the processes and make the engagement fruitful to both employers and search firms.

He says,

Employers struggle with managing multiple touchpoints of search firms, issues like slower turnaround time, poor profile quality, and high recruitment fee. Besides, the search firms find it challenging to acquire more business. With high fragmentation on both supply (search firms) and demand (employers) side, a technology platform to aggregate and enable both sides made perfect sense.

After UniHyr started operations in 2017, close to 120 employers and over 150 search firms have signed up on the platform. The employer and agency base is spread across the country, with around 35 percent users coming from the North, 29 percent from West, 28 percent from South, and eight percent from East.

How does the algorithm work?

After signing up, the employers upload their requirements, which are validated by UniHyr account manager to ensure that the job specifications are captured comprehensively based on which the search firms can work. Once validated, positions are made live on the platform, and agencies that specialise in the client’s area can view them. During the sign up, they have the option to offer rates lower than that prescribed to be more competitive. 

As a result of aggregation and a relatively larger number of search firms competitively working on a position, the sourcing and, thus, hiring time is cut down significantly, leading to higher profile quality and lower recruitment fee. Data from the platform suggests that the sourcing is at least 2.5 times faster, quality is two or three times better and cost is half of the market standards.

Besides aggregation, the platform has data science-driven smart screening algorithm, which provides an additional layer of automated screening. This will make the model scalable to ensure that clients receive the relevant profiles. Typically, each profile goes through two levels of screening before it reaches the employers.

The platform is a SaaS-enabled marketplace and all the profiles in the pipeline move through various stages of hiring within the system. There is also a chat application (web and mobile based), which provides hassle free real-time connect between employers and agencies. Nisheeth says that, as a result, the inefficiencies of managing multiple touch points on emails, and hundreds of phone calls are completely eliminated. Once the candidate is hired, the invoicing to the client happens automatically.

For every successful hire (candidate joining), the employer pays a recruitment fee that is defined by the rate offered by the search firm which sourced the candidate. Payment is made to the platform, which charges a commission fee from the search firm. Hence the primary source of revenue is outcome-based fee apart from a nominal signup fee that is charged while registering with the platform.

Future ahead

Nisheeth's focus area is on product roadmap and designing the go-to-market strategy for the products.

He explains,

We believe there is a huge untapped market at SMB level who want to keep up with the digitisation wave and are looking for automated and intelligent systems to expand their business. The company also plans to take these cloud-based SaaS solutions for hiring to markets outside India in the near future.