US-Based SHL All Set To Acquire HRtech Startup Aspiring Minds For $80 Mn

US-based talent evaluation company SHL, on October 22, announced its plans to acquire Gurgaon-based job credentialing platform Aspiring Minds for an undisclosed amount. The deal is expected to close in November and cost somewhere between $80-$100 Mn (INR 567-INR 709 Cr), largely all-in-cash.

Through this acquisition SHL plans to infuse Aspiring Minds’ artificial intelligence (AI) technology with SHL’s portfolio and leverage the “rigorous science to enable the technical, emerging and leadership talent required” for over 10K customers, SHL said in a media statement.

The deal will be overseen by Investment bank DC Advisory, who will also act as the financial advisor for the deal.

Founded in 2008 by Himanshu Aggarwal and Varun Aggarwal, Aspiring Minds is an employability evaluation and certification company that helps institutions and companies hire the right candidate. The company also allows candidates to take employability test to find the ‘right’ jobs through its flagship product AMCAT. AMCAT is said to serve over two million candidates every year.

The HRtech startup relies on its state-of-the-art, adaptive assessment technology and machine learning algorithms to allow adaptive, standardised and reliable measurement of generic employability skills, i.e. language, cognitive, behavior, among other functional skills. Currently, the company serves over 3000 clients across the US, China, Philippines, Middle East and southeast Asia, among others.

Some of the big names in its companies clientele include ecommerce giant Amazon, telecom operator Airtel, IT company Wipro and US industrial conglomerate Honeywell.

The company has reportedly raised over $3 Mn investments from investors Omidyar Network and Harvard Business School Professor Tarun Khanna.

Aspiring Minds has also invested in other companies and had set up a $1 Mn fund to provide seed investments to edtech and employment technology companies in October, 2015. In the same year, it also acquired the online and mobile internship platform LetsIntern, which was founded in 2011 by Rishabh Gupta and Pranay Swarup.

Other companies working in the same domain includes Talview, Skillenza, Leena AI, and Bash, among others.