Like lots of the finest concepts, the inspiration for Thailand-based recruitment software program specialist Manatal was the founders’ personal expertise. Jeremy Fichet, a type of founders, and now the corporate’s CEO, spent 10 years scaling up and runing e-commerce companies however at all times discovered the method of managing expertise recruitment irritating and time-consuming. Now Manatal, the enterprise he launched to unravel that drawback, is at present saying the closure of a $5.1m seed funding spherical.
“It usually prices small and medium-sized enterprises eight instances greater than a bigger firm to make a rent,” Fichet says. “That places these corporations, that are the spine of our economies, at an incredible aggressive drawback.”
The issue for companies is that the recruitment course of is messy. Companies should discover a approach to attraction to the broadest doable vary of candidates with a purpose to catch the very best folks; then there’s the entire means of whittling down these candidates to seek out the very best matches for the job; even the duty of onboarding may be bureaucratic and time-consuming.
Bigger companies have the assets to justify spending vital sums on human assets administration software program, which might sort out a few of these ache factors. However such know-how – even it had been to be inexpensive – is overkill for smaller corporations. And within the meantime, the recruitment crucial turns into ever harder as labour markets tighten and expertise shortages intensify.
Enter Manatal. Its end-to-end recruitment and onboarding platform is squarely geared toward these small and medium sized enterprises struggling in these methods.
The thought is to offer assist at every stage of the recruitment funnel. The platform ensures larger attain, for instance, by inserting candidate searches on as many on-line job boards as doable. It helps choice with a proprietary know-how that scores candidates towards the standards set out for the job. It helps firms handle candidate circulation by offering a way to trace candidates as they transfer by means of the method. And it then gives further assist as soon as candidates are appointed, offering a way with which to conduct onboarding extra effectively.
“So many firms try to handle all this with outdated spreadsheets, sprawling e mail chains and bits of paper,” says Fichet. “We’ve been by means of that ourselves and we thought we might assist.”
Manatal’s founders say they will remodel SMEs’ recruitment processes
Manatal
To make use of the software program, companies pay a month-to-month price, beginning at simply $15 for a single consumer. Fichet believes that is the best way to develop the enterprise – every new consumer has the potential to develop into an advocate for the product, encouraging colleagues to hitch up, and spreading the phrase of their networks past the organisation.
Manatal has invested nearly nothing in gross sales, Fichet factors out, however is already working with a number of thousand employers in 130 international locations worldwide. “We’re particularly pleased with one statistic particularly,” he provides. “We’re on the verge of breaking by means of 100,000 staff employed utilizing our platform.”
It’s doubtlessly a product of its time, given the battle for expertise now raging in so many markets worldwide. Higher recruitment processes could also be essential in successful that battle; analysis from the marketing consultant McKinsey suggests firms can realise a 40 p.c enhance within the high quality of hires and a 12 p.c lower in first yr attrition after they develop into extra considerate and data-driven about hiring.
These are concepts clearly not misplaced on Manatal’s traders. The funding spherical introduced at present is led by Sequoia India’s Surge programme, together with quite a lot of angel traders.
“We intend to reinvest the cash raised in our engineering groups,” Fichet explains. He sees the potential for substantial enhancements to the platform, with a specific deal with how synthetic intelligence instruments and elevated information science capabilities might drive smarter recruitment. The corporate can also be dedicated to launching the platform in different languages, having primarily focused English-speaking companies till now.
That is smart. Like different SaaS companies, the pitch of Manatal is a world one – and its platform is market agnostic. The reality is that small and medium-sized enterprises in all places face the identical recruitment challenges.
