Aspiring Minds, an employability assessment company, announced it has raised series A funding from Omidyar Network. Jayant Sinha, Partner, Omidyar Network India, will join the Board of Directors. The company did not disclose the funds that it raised.
Along with Omidyar Network, D S Brar also participated in the round. Currently, Brar is the chairman of GVK Biosciences, he also served as CEO of Ranbaxy until 2004. He was a Director at Reserve Bank of India until 2007.
Aspiring Minds will use the funding to extend its offerings to new verticals and expand to new geographies. Aspiring Minds’ Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT), the company’s flagship product, provides standardised employability benchmarks to students and enables employers to evaluate students for effective job placement. Already widely used within India’s information technology sector, the funds will enable Aspiring Minds to scale their reach in sectors such as BFSI, retail and hospitality industries
“There is clear, significant demand for Aspiring Minds’ services across India’s 20,000 colleges and 2-3 million annual graduates,” said Jayant Sinha, Omidyar Network.
Founded by two IIT and MIT alumni with the mentorship of Professor Tarun Khanna, Aspiring Minds uses proprietary technology in Computer Adaptive Assessment, statistical benchmarking and job-matching algorithms. Khanna, a professor at Harvard Business School, is a founding investor in Aspiring Minds.
More than 75 companies use Aspiring Minds’ recruitment solutions, including HCL, Sapient, Ericsson, ITC, SBI Life, Nokia, Keane, and Accor Hotels. Aspiring Minds has aided over 12,000 freshers to get a job on merit in the last year.
Himanshu Aggarwal, Co-Founder and Director, Aspiring Minds said, “AMCAT is already India’s largest employability assessment, taken by more than half a million graduates every year. This investment will help us scale to reach 40 million 10+2 and graduate job seekers, allowing them quantify their employability and secure the right jobs. Aspiring Minds can now build on our world-class adaptive assessment technology and unveil the next generation of products in assessment and evaluation.”
