Seed Funded Video Interview Platform Talocity Plans to Raise Series A Round Over the Next 3-4 Months

Talocity, the Talent Stock Exchange is an app based video interview platform powered by Video Analytics & Artificial Intelligence (VAAI). This all-mobile experience helps job seekers find their perfect jobs by matching their personality and strengths with the right job profiles.

Ketan Dewan, Co-founder and CEO, Talocity is a Cass Business School, London alumnus with more than 10 years’ experience in the industry. Ketan was also co-founder of PeopleStrong which was awarded HRO Today APAC Award for “Excellence in Business Partnership” as well as Rated Star Performer in Everest Group MPHRO PEAK Matrix.

In an interaction with BW Disrupt team, Ketan Dewan shares his entrepreneurial journey and details about his venture.

Business Model

We provide Sourcing of one-way video interviews, Pre-Screening of one-way video interviews using Video Analytics & Artificial Intelligence, scheduling of 1st round telephonic/ Face-2-face interviews using scheduling bots, personality reports across 48 attributes for any candidate based on only video pitch as input and chatbots to engage recruiters & job seekers. The services range from Rs 200 to Rs 1500 across various combinations as chosen by the client

Idea Generation

Talocity started as a concept in the head of the promotor in 2011 when there was “No G” or bad 2G on our phones. The fact that job-seekers & recruiters can meet before they meet was very compelling. Videos was the only way to handle it, but the network bandwidth didn’t support. So, there was time to build on the concept further-which involved solving two key problems associated with pre-screening & scheduling interviews.



Unique key Points

Talocity provides EASE translating into

For Job-seekers: Personal Interview Manager

You as a job-seeker have the power to choose where you want to work & Talocity as your manager will take care of the rest. Just upload a one way video interview and get interview invites from serious employers in your inbox. Choose where you want to be interviewed and the employer pays to meet you. So, no long waiting ques and no personal biases. Yes, it’s that simple. Besides getting a job interview, a job-seeker or for that matter anyone can get a detailed personality report across 48 attributes about themselves based on a video pitch in real time. The personality report can be used to identify the key limitations of a personality and enable due reflection by the seeker to learn how to manage the limitations.

For Employers: Talent Stock Exchange

A job-seeker comes for an interview to your office and in the first 2 minutes you get to know that you are not hiring him/her; but still have to suffer the job-seeker for 20 minutes, escort from the office gate-offer tea/coffee etc. etc.; while in the first 2 minutes you knew you were not making this hire. Can this change for you. For sure, Yes. It takes only 2 minutes to watch a 2 min one way video interview. To top it up, a detailed personality report of the job-seeker across 48 attributes, job-seeker relevancy scores etc.; to make an informed confident hiring decision. Also, with each accept/reject hiring decision; the machine learns and becomes capable to hire based on your customised patterns and within no time, it becomes even better than you. Talocity’s Video Analytics & Artificial Intelligence engine provides compelling analytics from a video pitch for recruitment decisions. If the R&D goes further for another 6 months, we may end up becoming a lie detector test.

Differentiation Factors

Talocity has a deep core competency of matching one way video interviews with one way video JDs, applying Machine Learning algorithm to translate into better & relevant matching which is real- as videos are real. The competition is either build on text CV to JD matching or does not have video analytics the way we do; which will play a crucial role in our growth story. We are ahead of the game in thought & development and hence even the largest players will take 12-18 months to catch up with us; while we would have moved ahead in that time.

Funding Raised

We have completed our Seed round & are in the process of raising our Series A over the next 3-4 months

Challenges Faced

The prospective clients are very excited to experience our product and the benefits it offers. We are a video jobsite; we reduce workload of a recruiter by over 85% and help companies save 3-6 % of the total recruitment budget. However, as there is no such solution in the market; they start treating us as a recruitment consultant and it takes some time to explain that we are the added hands & legs to your recruitment team including your empanelled recruitment consultants. Hence, market education is a current challenge that slows things a bit. But I guess how my mother can book a Cab from her smart phone today is so normal, while only 3 years back- I could not book it myself. Similarly- the adoption and education will fall in line soon owing to the huge benefits on offer in terms of time & cost benefits for the recruitment function.

How has been the people responses so far?

We have signed some marquee names as Clients and also have started getting repeat business from our clients. Also, job seekers can sit in the comfort of their homes/offices and get multiple interview invites without having to travel. We save travel time & cost for the job-seeker and people are very appreciative of this convenience and support.

Traction Details

· DB of one way video interviews= 20K

· Clients= Over a dozen & growing

· Very strong Data Science function enabling machine learning translating unstructured data using videos

Expansion Plans

Talocity looks to expand organically in the US & UK market in 2017. We are looking at partnership with some of the global HR ERP players to embed a Talocity placeholder and support their desire to provide agile solutions to their existing clients and thereby build a strong distribution network. Also, we will integrate ourselves with a key messaging app to support access of video pitches from people without downloading our app.

Marketing Plans

· Open sales offices in London, California & New York; besides already existing offices in Delhi NCR, Mumbai & Bangalore

· Online marketing via FB, Google

· Social media marketing via FB, Linkedin, Instagram & Twitter

· Key campaigns for job seeker data: #Day 1 salary: Treat friends on getting job, no wait till salary

· Key campaign to digitalise CV to video CVs for state governments to promote campaign #WorkFromHome: No Need to travel outside your city to find work, Earn your Bread & Butter in your home town. Detailed Report on Work from home to be presented with Government for Smart Cities Development initiatives as well

· Conference & Event marketing with NASSCOM & other leading HR events for employer marketing

· Open Talocity Experience Centres across all key retail locations to enable popularisation of the concept of video interviews

What has been the biggest learning so far?

Agile is the way to go, while change is also ever changing. So- Be in the room & make short term targets and back them up with everything to make it happen.
Market size and opportunity

· The Staffing industry is valued more than USD 400 billion globally, dominated by 3 large players (Adecco, Randstad and Manpower)

· In addition, some industries such as ITES/Financial Services that do volume hiring have built large internal teams

· The total Hiring market is estimated to be more than USD 600 billion globally

· The Total Addressable Market for HRIT is estimated to be in the range of USD 12 billion,

· The Total Relevant Market for HRIT – Recruitment is expected to be in the range of USD 1.5 billion per annum currently, but is expected to grow strongly as IT –led transformation takes hold.