Akhyansh Mahapatra and Naveen Beni founded the Bangalore-based startup. Its recommended technology analyzed millions of potential candidate profiles to help enterprises make more informed recruitment choices and boost the productivity of their businesses.
In human resource management, 60 percent of job applicants quit filling out employment applications if it is too long or complicated to understand. On the other side, recruiters often have to sift through a pile of job applications, and yet, they sometimes hire the wrong person for the job.
Searching for a job can be a tedious process, right from finding a resume to finding the right opportunity to fill multiple forms and then waiting to hear from a potential employer.
The case for the AI-powered model changing the recruitment space is very strong, and it allowed companies like FastNext to create an incredibly successful product and be acquired by the Talent 500 to explain how recruitment was taking place globally.
An idea that stemmed from college walls
The journey of FastNext started in 2016 when Akhyansh was doing his second year of engineering at IIT-Madras. However, FastNext was not his first attempt at entrepreneurship. As a student, he started Quabl, a collaborative learning platform for advanced undergraduate courses. While the placement model was good, the revenue model was not straightforward.
While searching for a co-founder, Akhyansh met Naveen, an experienced entrepreneur who has many years of experience in manufacturing B2B SaaS products primarily in the NLP space and state-of-the-art computer vision.
His career was started with a stint at Mu Sigma after graduating from Bits Goa and later moved to Freecharge. Before starting his entrepreneurial journey with FastNext, Naveen worked as an independent AI consultant with startups and Fortune 500 clients, building large-scale deep learning systems and designing.
Helping enterprises make informed hiring choices
There were too many players in the recruitment field, and since recruitment was a tedious process, it was confusing for both recruiters and candidates. You had to go through thousands of applications manually, but in the end, only a few qualified to be interviewed. FastNext eventually wanted to solve this fitment problem by recommending the best talent to companies for their needs.
On the other hand, some companies wanted to fill positions too quickly for standardized profiles. These were requirements that were more strategic than tactical, and you just wanted to get the job done. For such situations, FastNext had a job board-like system to reach candidates.
The larger mission under the acquisition
The founders realized that to make their product algorithms more, they needed to create a consumer product where candidates could come indirectly and apply for jobs. So he started producing FastNext Apply and soon realized that it was much the same as Vikram Ahuja of ANSR and Talent500 was promoting.
ANSR is a global leader helping multinationals and Fortune 500 companies to establish their own Global Capacity Centers (GCCs) in India and Talent500 was a product helping these enterprises hire top professionals and build large teams. Having hired over 75 000 professionals, ANSR seemed like the perfect home for FastNext to make an impact globally.
Covering the way for a new era of AI-led talent acquisition market
The COVID-19 epidemic has certainly changed the way companies operate, and many AI products and solutions designed by the founders are designed to help companies make such changes.
The founders’ journey has not been without challenges. He initially faced some resistance from investors, but his product spoke for him. Following the acquisition of Talent 500, he has worked with over 50 large enterprises such as Pepsi, Nike, Uber, Target, Lowes, Morgan Stanley, JCPenney.
This is an inspiring time for the team as the Talent 500 establishes itself as the fastest-growing remote team builder globally. Akhyansh and Naveen’s mission of hindering recruitment in India and globally is finally coming to life.