Predictive hiring platform Belong raises Series B funding of $10M led by Sequoia Capital and launches Belong Experts

Predictive hiring platform provider Belong on Tuesday raised Series B funding of $10 million led by Sequoia Capital. The round also saw participation from existing investor Matrix Partners. The funds will be used to expand sales and support operations and hire new talent across data science, enterprise sales, and customer success. It will also accelerate product development.

With this round of funding, Gautam Mago, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital, will be joining the board of directors which includes Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix Partners India, and Raju Reddy, Founder and ex-CEO, Sierra Atlantic.

Vijay Sharma, Co-founder and CEO of Belong, adds that since the company has always been focused on technology, it will continue to be tech-driven. “This year we will look at a non-linear growth with capital. While you can always add people to grow a business, we want to look at how businesses can grow using technology. We just have to build on what is already going well for us,” adds Vijay. Currently, Belong has 80-85 people and is now looking to have a team of over 120 people.

As to why the investors chose to invest in Belong, Gautam says,

“The team at Belong has demonstrated a relentless passion towards building a differentiated product that helps enterprises and growing companies alike in their toughest hiring challenges. In a world where companies need to respond to market realities quickly, Belong's AI-driven outbound approach to helping businesses discover and hire top talent is a step in the right direction. We couldn't be happier to partner with Belong to help accelerate their growth.”

Founded in 2014, Belong had raised Series A funding led by Matrix Partners in June 2015. The company claims to have doubled the number of mid-market and enterprise customers and grown over 411 percent year-on-year, in the number of offers generated through its platform.

Currently, Belong works with Amazon, Reliance Jio, Cisco, and ThoughtWorks. The platform helps businesses discover and target high-fit talent, engage candidates through personalised interactions, and accelerate hiring cycles at scale.

Belong also announced the launch of Belong Experts, a solution that connects employers to a verified network of independent talent experts for start-to-finish hiring support. The pilot launch of Belong Experts has begun with Uber, Xola, Postman, and LendingKart.

Abhinav Asthana, CEO and Co-founder of Postman, adds that Belong Experts has been their go-to-talent platform for over a year now. He says,

“We have made offers for highly complex roles in about 10-14 days on the platform. It's, in fact, one of the few solutions that combines high quality candidates with low time-to-fill ratios for our recruiting team.”

With Belong Experts organisations can engage with ready-to-interview candidates who have been custom-sourced and qualified for their hiring needs. They also get end-to-end hiring support from domain-specific talent experts, including candidate engagement, interview scheduling and coordination, and offer management.

Speaking of why he feels a solution like Belong is important, Vijay explains – “Everyone ‘belongs’ somewhere. The idea is to ensure that the companies get the right candidate for the job, and the candidate feels that they are creating and adding value.”

He adds that they wanted to move away from the ‘spray-and-pray’ methods that are used in traditional recruiting. The idea is to ensure that the hiring efforts be personalised and targeted to ensure a win-win for the company and the individual.

Tarun, board member, Belong, adds that the company is working to revolutionalise how organisations, find, engage, and hire top-quality talent. He adds that from their seed investment in 2014, Belong today has come a long way.

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