Skill assessment startup Equip.co bags Rs 3.2 crores from Better Capital

In an effort to automate the recruitment and screening process, skill-based hiring platform Equip.co closes a USD 400K pre-seed round from Better Capital. The funds will be deployed towards hiring for product, engineering and marketing roles, and towards onboarding subject-matter experts who will help expand the scope of skills that are currently tested.

“We are making skill assessments 100X easier with Equip and putting it everywhere it’s needed without forcing users to go on different workflows and journeys. We are excited to be the founding stage partner to Equip” said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital.

As the hiring process shifts online, the number of candidates applying for open positions has increased massively. Recruiters are finding it difficult to identify relevant profiles, because they must spend a lot of time manually parsing each CV or getting on a call with every candidate. Equip’s automated skill assessments help recruiters filter candidates across roles like engineering, data science, sales and support, etc. By specifying the relevant skills and desired experience, a recruiter can create a shareable assessment in less than 2 minutes. The candidate takes the assessment on Equip and the recruiter uses this score to screen them. Recruiters can use content Equip provides or create their own tests. Equip claims that, on average, recruiters shortlist only the top 3% of the assessed candidates, and so save 97% of their time.

Commenting on the announcement, Jayanth Neelakanta, Founder & CEO of Equip.co, said, "We are delighted to announce our first round of funding. As the name suggests, we want to equip recruiters with identifying great talent. Equip will not only help companies reduce the time and effort to hire, but also help them look beyond CVs and pedigree, and focus on candidates’ skills. We are confident that our significantly simpler UX and the variety of roles we test for will prove to be competitive advantages.”

Founded in August 2020 by Jayanth Neelakanta, Equip.co is streamlining the recruitment process through its automated tests across multiple skills. Jayanth has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Syracuse University and returned to India to build EdTech products. During the spread of COVID, one of his customers told him about how online exams were difficult to monitor. So, his team launched AutoProctor, which grew popular immediately, and has been used in 15 million tests in the last couple of years, with paying customers from 100+ countries. Because AutoProctor was being used by many recruiters for pre-hiring tests, the team launched Equip as a dedicated tool for recruiters with many more features in January, 2022. The team claims Equip has assessed tens of thousands of candidates since.