Aakash Chaudhry Leads Series-A Funding In HONO

Managing Director of Aakash+BYJU’s—a leading test-preparation company, Aakash Chaudhry has led the Series A funding of Human Resource Automation company HONO with an investment of USD four million (INR over 30 crore).

In order to double scale its operations, HONO has raised a total of USD 5 million. While the company has raised USD four million from Aakash+BYJU’s, it has raised the other USD one million from individual investors including Hemant Sultania, Amit Khanna of Amaya Ventures, and Harsh Gupta of Udayat Group.

With over three hundred plus clients like Indigo Airlines, Spencer’s Retail, Kanmo Group, Dainik Bhaskar, Al Fardan Group, NBC Bearings, HDFC Bank, Medicover, and Aakash+BYJU’S, and over 1 million employees on its AI-backed platform, HONO has achieved remarkable growth of 2X during FY22.

They now intend scaling the business and their sales vertical, and plan to double their client numbers, aiming at supporting five million people on the HONO platform in the current FY 23.

Reiterating his reasons for investing in HONO he said that Aakash+BYJU’s is expecting HONO’s growth curve to show a much steeper rise hereon.

He said that HONO’s emphasis on technology, particularly AI to address, simplify and humanize end to end HR processes being a single source of truth and its ability to transform HR into a productivity driver is something we believe in.

We value the strong and constructive relationship with HONO, developed over years of association with them as a client, he added.

Meanwhile, Chaudhry will join the Board of Directors of the company and will be involved in guiding business operations.

Expressing his thoughts, Mukul Jain, Founder and CEO, HONO said that the presence of Aakash Chaudhry in Board of Directors will establish its investors’ faith in the business.

He said that this strategic investment also reinstates HONO’s belief and the belief of the market in the direction HONO is evolving.

What Is HR Technology?

This technology helps professionals in automating routine operations, secure data storage, and augment analytical management of reports for improved decision making.

What Human Resources (HR) Processes Have Been Automated?

The HR process automation can be divided into various categories based on function of an organisation, technology application and management priorities like efficiency, utility, consistency, data analytics, cost-saving, remote work, and facilitating collaboration. 

Benefit From Automation In HR Process

Talent Management (TM) Software: The Talent Management helps organisations to manage acquisition and performance. The automation of this process facilitates onboarding, recruiting and learning.

Workforce Management (WFM) Software: 

The automation of Workforce Management (WFM) Software assists in data analysis for business processes and supporting various other activities.

These applications are available in several buying options – they can be purchased as part of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite, HR suites, operations applications, workforce management suites, or as stand-alone applications.

Payroll Management Software: 

This software helps in managing HR activities including payroll operations and also helps organisation to define its policy followed by payroll accounting, pay-out, and reporting.

Performance Management Software: This is a corporate management tool that helps managers supervise and evaluate employees’ work. Performance management’s goal is to create an environment where people can perform to the best of their abilities and produce the highest-quality work most efficiently and effectively.

A Look At India’s HR Tech Market

The Indian HR Tech market is primarily being driven by the widespread adoption of contactless hiring solutions in organisations. These solutions deliver enhanced flexibility, scalability, and reduce the risks of implicit biases.

A recent research report, ‘Building Digital Skills for the Changing Workforce’, commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and produced by strategy and economics consulting firm AlphaBeta, states that cloud, cybersecurity, and machine learning technologies will be among the most sought digital skills by 2025.

The pandemic made the skills gap more evident as an overwhelming share of professionals admitted they required more digital skills to cope with changes in their work.

Opportunities For Education-Focused Investors

The gap in digital skills education will create opportunities for many education start-ups and it will pave the way for development of new learning platforms and collaboration between technology firms and institutes of research and digital excellence within universities.

Various surveys already predict that the digital economy could unlock 60 million to 65 million jobs by 2025.

Digital skilling and re-skilling initiatives will thus necessitate close engagement between academia, market, and the government.