Outbound recruitment solution Belong raises $10 mln from Sequoia, Matrix

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Belong, an outbound recruitment solution that helps businesses target, engage and hire talented passive candidates, raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital India, with participation from existing investor Matrix Partners India. It raised its Series A funding in June 2015.

The company will use the funds to accelerate product development, expand sales and support operations, and hire new talent across engineering, data science, enterprise sales and customer success.

Gautam Mago, managing director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors, has joined the Belong Board of Directors, which includes Tarun Davda, managing director at Matrix Partners India, and Raju Reddy, founder and ex-CEO of Sierra Atlantic.

“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,” said Mago.

Founded in 2014, Belong provides outbound hiring Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS) solution to industry leaders like Cisco, Amazon, UHG, Tesco, Reliance Jio and ThoughtWorks. The company’s platform helps businesses discover and target high-fit talent, engage candidates through personalised interactions, and accelerate hiring cycles at scale.

“Talented candidates today are overwhelmed by the ‘spray-and-pray’ tactics of traditional recruiting. Not only does it annoy them, but it also leads to poor engagement and conversions for recruiters,” said Vijay Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Belong.

Outbound hiring solutions are seeing rising demand because of diminishing returns on inbound hiring with top talent today no longer “applying” into jobs. Belong addresses this challenge. While the platform’s Discovery solution uses machine intelligence to help recruiters target highly relevant candidates open to pursuing new opportunities, its Engagement solution enables recruiters to convert target candidates into interested candidates with 3X more efficiency than traditional platforms.