Wisdom Jobs to raise $6.5 million to fuel growth plans

“Talks with a couple of V Cs are in advanced stages and we expect to close the deal within this quarter. The proposed funds will be utilized for brand-building, besides expanding our physical presence and sales force,” he told Business Standard.The four-year-old job search engine, built in-house, is present in 12 countries including the US, UK, Italy, Australia and Canada with major presence in the Gulf, and in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai in India.

Kolla said the company was gearing up to enter Noida, Pune, Kochi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad markets by the end of 2015-16 financial year, besides adding over 200 resources to its current headcount of 320 during the same time frame.

Stating that the portal currently had a registered data base of 28 million job seekers, with 20,000 new registrations and 70,000 updates of existing users happening every day, he said the company was expecting an addition of seven million registrations by December this year.

The job search and recruitment market in India is estimated to be at over Rs 6,000 crore, with the online component alone accounting for Rs 2,000 crore.

At present, WisdomJobs.com has a clientele base of over 3,500 recruiters. It charges anywhere between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh a year from each client. Pragnya Meter, its proprietary tool with global patents that delegates the candidates to go through a skill test, enabling recruiters to identify candidates with right skills based on scores achieved, comes as a package with the subscription.

WisdomJobs garnered revenues of Rs 22 crore in the last financial year. While IT contributed 40 per cent to the revenues, banking financial services six per cent and pharma seven per cent, other sectors, including manufacturing, accounted for the rest.

“We expect our revenues to touch Rs 40 crore this financial year primarily on the back of increasing clientele base, which is expected to stand at 5,500 by the end of this year,” Kolla said.