AI hiring startup Hunar.AI raises Rs 40 crore from Blume Ventures, others

Hunar.AI has raised Rs 40 crore in a Series A funding round led by Blume Ventures to expand its conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform, which helps companies hire, train and retain frontline workers, the company said on 19 October.

The round takes its total funding to Rs 65 crore till date. Hyderabad Angels Fund (HAF.VC), Together Fund, Seedstars, AVNM Ventures, PhysicsWallah co-founders Prateek Maheshwari and Alakh Pandey, and MediaMint co-founder Aditya Vuchi also participated in the round.

The AI-hiring startup plans to use the money for AI infrastructure, product development and sales and market expansion, targeting businesses that need to recruit and manage large workforces across locations and languages.


“Frontline workforce management is one of the largest yet most underserved opportunities in enterprise AI. Solving it requires more than applying general-purpose models to existing processes. It demands a deep understanding of industry workflows, multilingual capabilities and technology to execute tasks at scale,” Krishna Khandelwal, co-founder and chief executive of Hunar.AI said in a statement.

“This funding will help us deepen our technology capabilities, strengthen our AI infrastructure and expand our reach across industries and markets,” he added.

Founded in 2022 by Khandelwal and Shantanu Bhattacharyya, Hunar.AI serves businesses across quick commerce, e-commerce, logistics, mobility, financial services, healthcare and retail.

Its two products, Hunar Voice and Hunar Connect, use AI agents to communicate with candidates and employees through voice calls, WhatsApp and chat. The software handles tasks such as finding and screening candidates, scheduling interviews, onboarding recruits, training workers and following up with employees.

As per company claims, its agents handled more than 15 million conversations in September 2026, with volumes doubling every quarter. Hunar.AI counts Swiggy, Delhivery, Instamart, Pronto, Blue Dart, Flipkart, Aditya Birla Capital and Tata Croma among its clients.

The company said its focus includes businesses where hiring and workforce management still require manual calls, repeated follow-ups and coordination between teams. Its platform supports more than 20 languages, including Tamil, Telugu and Kannada, allowing companies to communicate with workers in their preferred language.

Rathnakar Samavedam, managing partner at HAF.VC, linked the investment to the company's experience with workforce processes.

“Hunar’s roots in services gave it a deep understanding of frontline workflows, and it built that context into the product,” he said.

Hunar.AI said it is investing in AI models, systems that coordinate tasks and tools to assess performance to make its software more reliable for large volumes of interactions. It said it aims to analyse conversations to identify workforce concerns and operational bottlenecks.

It is also moving towards pricing linked to business outcomes rather than relying exclusively on charges for each user. The release did not specify which outcomes would determine those charges or how the company would measure them.