Could This Startup’s AI Recruiters Be The Future Of Hiring?

If there is one pain point that is common among most human resource (HR) professionals, it is hiring the right candidate. For job seekers, the process could be as simple as submitting a resume and clearing a few rounds to land a dream job, but for recruiters, it begins with sifting through a sea of resumes to find the perfect fit for their organisation.  

Unfortunately, despite the rise of HR tech platforms in the last decade or so, tech-driven hiring has remained absent from the larger recruitment landscape. Now, let us not confuse the word ‘tech-based hiring’ with posting resumes or job requirements on a website or creating a marketplace for jobs or candidates.

Imagine having a tech platform aligned strategically to your business that could assess the requirements for your organisation, automatically look for candidates to create a talent pool, and hire the best-suited talent with little or zilch human interventions. Among other aspirations, some may want a platform that could onboard with much dexterity and pave the talents’ entire journey seamlessly until their exit.

However, to be true, this seems a bit too far-fetched. Even companies like Naukri, Indeed Shine.com, et al, have been able to achieve only little on this front. 

Acknowledging the tech gap in the industry, especially with the advent of GenAI, Roli Gupta decided to rewrite the rules of traditional recruitment processes during the pandemic and floated Babblebots in 2022.

Headquartered in Mumbai, Babblebots leverages GenAI to supercharge the hiring process for organisations. Currently serving Indian and US companies, the platform creates digital agents or AI recruiters capable of conducting long-form, human-like conversations with candidates. These AI recruiters utilise advanced LLMs and proprietary AI models to simplify recruitment.

“The recruitment process is often cumbersome and requires weeks of effort and multiple rounds of interviews to shortlist candidates. We have reduced hiring timelines from 30 days to just 3,” Gupta said, adding that Babblebots’ AI recruiters also manage tasks like scheduling, providing timely rejections, and enhancing engagement with top talent, freeing up teams to focus on attracting the best candidates.

The platform also offers AI-powered CV screening and co-pilots for conducting job interviews and assessments.

With a network of more than 100 users, the B2B startup counts Alkem Laboratories, Welspun Enterprises, MJ Biopharm, Ajmera Realty, IPS Staffing Indus Towers, and IIT Bombay’s Development and Relations Foundation (DRF) among its top clients. It has conducted more than 40,000 interviews across 200+ roles and analysed thousands of hours of interview data to refine its models. 

Babblebots’ Inception Story

Babblebots was born from Gupta’s passion for tackling new problems and creating scalable solutions. An engineer by profession, Gupta enjoyed working with new technologies. 

Before incorporating Babblebots, Gupta founded Oorjan Cleantech, a solar energy startup, in 2014. She, however, moved away in 2019 after realising that the role of technology in solar was limited in terms of adoption. 

“It was more about financing and branding, and less about technology as a competitive advantage,” the founder said.

After Gupta departed from Oorjan Cleantech, she got fixated on finding a new challenge to solve and joined edtech startup Toppr in 2019. 

At the time, the company had secured Series A funding and was looking for someone to lead and build their sales hiring and training vertical. As an entrepreneur, she knew how difficult it was to find the right talent. She could relate to the challenge, so embarked on the opportunity. 

“I had always known that the traditional hiring process was broken, but never got the chance to really do something about it,” Gupta said. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, she said she had enough time to think about a solution that could fix traditional recruitment patterns. 

She thought that basic HR functions like sourcing and screening could be easily done with the help of AI agents. Interestingly, the only advantage she had at the time was her experience with a US-based tech company that had a similar product. 

“I have worked at a startup where they used machine learning and computational linguistics in 2012. I worked on a product that utilised natural language to perform searches, which made me familiar with computational linguistics and how computers can understand everyday language,” Gupta said, adding that she was sure of one thing that ‘voice’ had to be the most important element for her product.

In the process, the founder spoke with more than 40 senior professionals across different countries. When Gupta pitched that she was trying to automate the HR function, she received positive feedback.

With this, she began to piece things together and started building proof of concept and tech around Babblebots in 2021 and incorporated the company in the US first. After many iterations and different versions, the founder finally launched Babblebots as a B2B platform in 2022. However, it was only in March 2023 when the startup was introduced to the world.

Babblebots’ Initial Hiccoughs 

Even though the founder was confident about the sector and the use of technology, she was initially unsure about Babblebot’s exact offerings. The first iteration of Babblebot was launched as a B2C upskilling platform.

“I thought candidates might need help improving their interview skills and presenting themselves more effectively,” Gupta said.

With this version, she ran a series of cohort-based classes in early 2021 to help people improve their communication skills. However, at this stage, Babblebot had yet to get registered.

By Q4 2021, she finished the proof of concept and started gathering feedback. But then she had an epiphany — “Instead of offering it for interview preparation, why not sell it to companies to solve their hiring problems?” 

The idea proved to be a game-changer, also because she realised that upskilling products are a one-time game — people upskill, get a job, and move on — offering low lifetime value, especially in the interview preparation space, which often lacks scale.

“B2B started appealing to me more because I had prior experience in enterprise software. I realised we could go global, sign big deals, and build something substantial that could be monetised better,” the founder said.

Hence, the founder decided to go with the B2B model instead of B2C. The startup received its first cheque from US-based angel investors. “However, receiving investment wasn’t enough. Building the product from scratch required significant effort. With a team of three engineers, we built the product and conducted trials with a few customers, but no formal contracts were signed during this phase,” the founder said.

Babblebots Tech In The Play

The startup began its journey with audio interviews in a format similar to Google Meet. Over time, the platform has expanded its play to include video interviews and assessment capabilities. 

The HR tech’s current offerings include resume parsing, video interviews, and a more enhanced full interview experience, along with a quick phone interview option. Generally, the products are priced based on platform access, which includes a platform fee and a per-interview charge.

“The first challenge was designing voice interactions. Determining when the bot should speak, interpreting interruptions like “sorry” as either a lack of understanding or a repetition request, and crafting intelligent follow-up questions demanded advanced logic,” Gupta said.

The second challenge was ensuring compatibility across India’s diverse range of devices and internet bandwidths. Then, companies started asking for detailed assessment reports. “This is where things got complicated, as assessing subjective questions is tricky. Therefore, our system had to not only rate responses but also explain why it gave a particular rating,” the founder said.

This required the founder to improve the AI’s ability to explain its reasoning behind each rating, making the assessments more valuable to its clients.

Next, the founder had to train the AI on large amounts of data to understand the way candidates respond to questions. Here, the team faced complexities in understanding language. Handling variations of English, such as US, UK, and Indian English, was tricky, as each has its own expressions and phrasing. This made it difficult to assess responses consistently. 

“It was not just about direct translations; the AI also needed to understand the context and meaning behind the responses to make accurate assessments,” the founder said.

Currently, the platform supports Hinglish and 30 other languages, but it only develops language models based on specific requirements. 

With these advancements, Babblebots claims to have automated many tasks that were traditionally handled by humans, making the HR function more efficient. The company’s video interview agent, Tina, conducts hundreds of interviews per day.

What’s In The Pipeline For Babblebots?

While still in its early stages, the startup claims to be harvesting an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of INR 1.2 Cr, and, per the founder, has seen a 2X increase in revenue every quarter this year.

Meanwhile, to build the brand’s presence, the startup is looking to raise around $3 Mn in the next six months. So far, it has raised $1.2 Mn from Anchorage Capital Partners, BonBillo, Z21 Ventures, Ahead VC, and angel investors Rakesh Mathur, Jiten Apte and Rishi Deshpande.

Currently, at a pre-revenue stage in the US, the startup’s key focus will be to deepen its presence in the US market. It plans to invest more in both product and marketing. 

“Currently, the product is about 80% applicable in the US, but the market there has its own nuances. So, we will be investing 30-40% of funds in product development for US markets,” Gupta said.

The startup is also looking to integrate with other assessment companies and ensure its product is GDPR compliant.

Moving on, the startup aims to expand beyond recruitment and into areas like upskilling and employee engagement. 

Going ahead, the founder is optimistic about making a mark with its AI-based solution in the global HR tech market currently valued at $500 Bn. However, the industry is crowded, and standing out will require consistent innovation and a keen understanding of diverse market needs. For now, it would be interesting to see if Babblebots can truly revolutionise the global HR tech landscape with its AI recruiters.

[Edited By Shishir Parasher]