Real story behind Quikr acquiring Hiree

India’s Top cross category classifieds Portal – Quikr has acquired Hiree (Abhiman Technologies Pvt. Ltd), an online hiring platform focused on white collar jobs in a bid to bolster its own QuikrJobs offering.

Hiree, which counts world’s largest IT companies and India’s highest valued startups in its customer list will be merged with its jobs vertical QuikrJobs and will operate out of Quikr HQ.

About Quickr and its Funding

Quikr is India’s largest and broadest classifieds platform that is used by over 30 million unique users a month. It is present in 1000 cities in India and operates several large classifieds businesses across C2C, Cars, Education, Homes, Jobs and Services. Quikr is accessible across mobile app, mobile site as well as desktop, and allows consumers as well as small businesses to sell, buy, rent and find things across its multiple categories with great ease.

Quikr raised $350 million across eight rounds of funding from investors like Kinnevik, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners and Nokia Growth Partners including the $150 million in its most recent funding round which closed in April 2015, and it has been busy with M&A since then.

Quikr Jobs’ is already a leading recruitment platform for blue, grey collar and entry-level jobs across India, the acquisition is set to further boost its offerings to address recruitment needs for the entire spectrum of job categories across industries.

About Hiree and its Funding

Hiree (erstwhile myNoticePeriod.com) was founded by ex- stalwarts of Yahoo, Manjunath Talwar and Abhijit Khasnis intended to increase the speed of the hiring process. The company had also launched an app for Android users. Initially, they wanted to target only those who were in the notice period bracket. Hence, the former name “myNoticePeriod.com”.

Hiree is at the forefront of innovation in the recruitment space. It has leapt ahead of competition by constantly adding benefits like smart matching algorithms, real-time alerts, a unique private messaging system and dedicated Android app for recruiters. The recently launched Walk-in management system and novel way of posting resumes as videos are keeping Hiree ahead. Hiree’s vision is to be the fastest technology driven hiring platform.

Hiree raised funding to the tune of Rs 20 crore from IDG Ventures (which is also an investor in some of the leading startups Flipkart, Yatra, Myntra, Zivame and more) and a clutch of angel investors including Raghu Krishnananda, Shamsunder Talreja and Prashant Kirtane.

The Acquisition

Quickr believes that there is a synergy between Hiree and Quikr, and it will help the company integrate the white collar job space which together forms a formidable force that plays across the entire job spectrum. The combined entity is aimed at creating a recruitment platform that connects over four million active candidates with recruiters across the country. The enhanced product portfolio coupled with Quikr’s missed call service will make a larger talent pool available to recruiters for entry-level, blue collar as well as white collar lateral hires.

Talking about the move, Pranay Chulet, Founder & CEO, Quikr said, “We launched QuikrJobs with an aim to bridge the gap between Bharat and India for the recruitment industry. We have created a successful business model there and it’s now time to level-up. Speed is in our DNA and Hiree’s offerings aimed at shortening recruitment cycle times is a great match with that.”

Manjunath & Abhijit, Founders of Hiree said, “Joining forces with Quikr allows us to double-up our focus on innovating in recruitment space for both job seekers and our customers. Our customers will now gain the benefits of Hiree’s technology and massive scale of Quikr in parallel.”

Amit Jain, Head of QuikrJobs said, “Access to products like Video Resume on the supply side and Walk-In Management solution on the demand side will instantly boost our offerings. In a short span of time, Hiree has built a strong client base and we look forward to bringing our combined offering to our combined client bases. With technology led innovation at the core of both platforms, together we form a formidable force that plays across the entire job spectrum.”

Probable reasons for the Acquisition

Hiree had a bumpy ride as overall hiring, especially by start-ups, slowed down after start-ups scaled back to conserve cash and started focusing on streamlining their operations with the existing workforce following a slowdown in investments. Hiree also pruned its workforce. The firm undertook two rounds of lay-offs, in February and in April. The company hasn’t raised since then, nearly 18 months ago, and it reportedly laid off 80 percent of its staff in April, which hints at the reasons behind this deal.

According to the sources, the company has retained only junior level staff and has fired the rest. The employees were committed two months pay and were asked not to come.

This was communicated to employees yesterday (15th April) in a meeting.

Founder Manjunath Talwar in an emailed response, stated,

“As part of the normal business growth and efficiency building, we have taken steps to optimize costs. We have no further comments at this point of time.”

The Hiree acquisition is in line with Quikr’s verticalization drive, under which the company is focusing on five key business segments—automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer-to-customer sales—that it has identified as new sources of revenue to fend off competition from other venture capital-backed firms that have emerged in each of these categories. However, each of the verticals the firm plans to focus on has seen the emergence of a number of well-funded start-ups.

Quickr on an Acquisition Spree

Quickr has been on an acquisition spree of late acquiring startups, making strategic investments and strengthening its verticals. This is the fifth acquisition made by the cross-category classifieds business in the last two years and the third in 2016.  Earlier in January, Quikr had acquired CommonFloor and on-demand in-home beauty services provider Salosa. Last year, it acquired Realty Compass and Realty Exchange under QuikrHomes.

According to a filing with the Registrar of Companies, Quikr reported a revenue of Rs. 24.78 crore for the year ended March 2015, while its net loss was Rs.446 crore.

Future Plans

Among all the verticals, QuikrJobs and its classifieds portal Quikr have been the most popular. On the job recruitment front, the company is facing competition from Naukri, Monster and LinkedIn, among others.

QuikrJobs recently reached a milestone of over 10 lakh job seeker profiles created through its missed call service alone. This in addition to profiles created via desktop and mobile. The platform offers an easy to understand role-based search for both recruiters and job-seekers across full-time, part-time, work-from-home and even work abroad options. The Company through this acquisition aims to reach the top position in this segment.