Matrix Partners India invests $5 million in Belong

Matrix Partners India has announced that it has led the first institutional round of funding in Belong, a company that is transforming the way businesses hire great talent. Belong will use the funds to further accelerate its aggressive growth and customer success.

The round saw participation from Blume Ventures, and leading angels, including Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders of Snapdeal; Phanindra Sama, co-founder of redBus, and Raju Reddy, founder of Sierra Atlantic, among others.

Belong enables growing companies to discover and engage talent through data science and predictive analytics. Its powerful search and recommendation technology analyzes millions of profiles across social, Internet and public sources to help companies discover potential candidates who best fit their culture and skill requirements. The data-driven solution also helps companies kickstart engagement with candidates through personalized interactions that are backed by social insights.

"We plan to invest heavily in our team and technology. We intend to triple-down on our product and focus majorly on our Data Sciences, R&D and Engineering in the coming months." said Vijay Sharma, co-founder and CEO, Belong.

He added, “While Belong is currently open for growing companies to hire product and engineering talent, it will soon be available for hiring data sciences and design talent, as well.”

“Despite advances in technology, recruitment heads of companies struggle with a barrage of ill- suited resumes, long recruitment cycles and candidates that are a poor-fit with company culture.
Belong is revolutionizing how companies discover, engage and hire top-quality talent. It is our privilege to partner with Vijay Sharma and Sudheendra Chilappagari, the co-founders of Belong, who are disrupting the way companies hire,” said Tarun Davda, Director, Matrix India.

“The SaaS market in India is developing very fast and the next few years will see world-class SaaS companies coming out of India. Matrix India has made five SaaS investments in the past twelve months and we plan to continue investing aggressively to build upon our global SaaS franchise,” added Davda.

“Hiring, as we know it, is broken at a fundamental level at most levels in most organizations. It needs reimagining - it's becoming about culture, fit, sustainability and about belonging to a place where we spend more waking hours than any other place. Vijay and the founding team at Belong are deeply committed to engineering solutions using data to solve the problems of hiring the 'right' people to the right jobs and companies. We're excited about the beginnings and the possibilities,” said Karthik Reddy, Managing Partner at Blume Ventures.

While the company only launched publicly this month, its solution has already been put to test by some of India's fastest-growing companies that are using it to recruit aggressively for product and engineering positions. Early customers include Snapdeal, Ola, Practo, Akosha, Zivame, and more -- all of which have collectively made more than 100 offers through the solution.

"Belong has helped us quickly hire quality talent, especially mid to senior hires. Where it stands out is in its ability to consistently bring relevant, competent and interested talent to the table," said Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO and co-founder of Ola.