Youth4work Raises Rs 2.8 crore in bridge capital

BENGALURU: Delhi-based Youth4work, a startup offering pre-assessed talent-for-hire to companies, has raised $0.5 million ( Rs 2.8 crore) in bridge capital from Aurum Equity Partners, Global Asia Partners, and UKbased angel investor Dan Sandhu.

Founded by Rachit Jain in 2012, Youth4work is a platform where individuals showcase their talent and skills, that are finally tested and ranked. These pre-assessed profiles are made available to companies to make suitable hires. "We have 5 lakh users currently and want to reach one million users in the next eight months. We will use funding for marketing, user experience, mobile and the team," said Jain, CEO and director, Youth4work.

The platform also helps companies engage people with specific skill sets for specific activities. "In a short span time of time they have grown to a half a million user base with a tested business model and created a community which today can either become a large youth LinkedIn community or a vocational play and could go either way. Without any marketing dollars to grow this user base manifold, in a business where cost of customer acquisition is so heavy, is a great achievement," said Sanjay Bansal, founder, Aurum, on his reasons for investing. Bansal has invested both in an individual capacity and through Aurum Equity, a sunrise sector focused, investment banking firm. The company's user base spans 250 cities across India, with a network of 5,400 colleges and 9,000 registered recruiters. "I liked what Rachit was doing — building a LinkedIn platform for understanding of individual capabilities to really get assessment.

India has a depth of vocational skills and what's lacking is the ability to take self-assessment," said Sandhu, an educational investor and entrepreneur besides being a mentor to Youth4work. A unique yRank is assigned to each talent based on a ranking algorithm considering the person's performance in the yTest, contributions in talent discussion forums, profile completeness, social vouches, what they view, show interest in etc. The company clients include Microsoft, Adobe, Mahindra and Aon Hewitt among others.