Matrix Partners-backed Belong raises $10M Series B led by Sequoia

Bangalore, February 28, 2017: Belong, the world's first predictive outbound hiring platform provider, today announced it has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital India, with participation from existing investor Matrix Partners India. The company said it will use the funds to accelerate product development, expand sales and support operations, and hire new talent across engineering, data science, enterprise sales and customer success. Gautam Mago, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors, has joined the Belong Board of Directors, which includes Tarun Davda, Managing Director at Matrix Partners India, and Raju Reddy, Founder and ex-CEO of Sierra Atlantic.

Founded in 2014, Belong provides outbound hiring Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution to industry leaders like Cisco, Amazon, UHG, Tesco, Reliance Jio and ThoughtWorks. The company's platform helps businesses discover and target high-fit talent, engage candidates through personalized interactions, and accelerate hiring cycles at scale. "With Belong, our recruiters are able to quickly cut through the noise, identify the right people with much greater accuracy and generate conversions more effectively than on mainstream hiring platforms. In today's candidate-centric market, I'd say data-driven outbound hiring is clearly the most intelligent and scientific way to scale recruiting,' said Savita Hortikar, Head of Talent Acquisition - India, at ThoughtWorks.

Outbound hiring solutions like Belong are seeing rising demand because of diminishing returns on inbound hiring with top talent today no longer "applying' into jobs. Belong addresses this challenge head-on. While the platform's Discovery solution uses machine intelligence to help recruiters target highly relevant candidates open to pursuing new opportunities, its Engagement solution enables recruiters to convert target candidates into interested candidates with 3X more efficiency than traditional platforms.

"Talented candidates today are overwhelmed by the '˜spray-and-pray' tactics of traditional recruiting. Not only does it annoy them, but it also leads to poor engagement and conversions for recruiters,' said Vijay Sharma, CEO and Co-founder of Belong. "With Belong, hiring efforts can be highly targeted and personalized to generate win-win conversations where the company's offering and the candidate's needs are truly aligned. This is a vision for the future of recruiting, and we are thrilled to have Gautam and Sequoia India on this journey with us.'

"The team at Belong has demonstrated a relentless passion towards building a differentiated product that helps enterprises and growing companies alike in their toughest hiring challenges. In a world where companies need to respond to market realities quickly, Belong's AI-driven outbound approach to helping businesses discover and hire top talent is a step in the right direction. We couldn't be happier to partner with Belong to help accelerate their growth,' said Gautam Mago, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

Since Belong raised its Series A funding in June 2015, the company has doubled its number of mid-market and enterprise customers, and has seen a 411% year-on-year increase in the number of offers generated via its platform. On product innovation, it launched a series of industry-first features to automate diversity recruiting, bring company-specific relevance into people search, and offer automated talent market insights and reports.

"Belong is revolutionizing how companies discover, engage and hire top-quality talent. With its targeted, data-driven and candidate-focused approach, Belong is helping marquee brands like Amazon, Cisco, Ola, Thoughtworks and Xiaomi, among others, find top talent. From our seed investment in 2014 to the launch of Belong Experts platform today, the company has come a long way. Matrix Partners India is privileged to be Vijay and Sudheendra's early partner in this journey and we welcome Sequoia India to the Belong partnership,' said Tarun Davda, Belong Board Member and Managing Director at Matrix Partners India.

"Belong represents a select list of product startups from India with the potential to become a global player. The leadership team at Belong has done an exceptional job with a compelling vision and a strong corporate culture which continues to attract top quality people. I am delighted to have Gautam Mago and Sequoia India as our partner in building a world class company,' added Raju Reddy, Belong Board Member and ex-CEO of Sierra Atlantic.

Launching New Hiring Solution Belong Experts

Timed with the investment, Belong today also announced the launch of Belong Experts, a platform-based solution that connects employers to a verified network of independent talent experts for start-to-finish hiring support.

With Belong Experts, companies can:

• Engage ready-to-interview candidates who have been custom-sourced and qualified for their hiring needs.
• Get end-to-end hiring support from domain-specific talent experts, including candidate engagement, interview scheduling and coordination, and offer management.
• Get the Belong platform advantage, which includes AI-driven search, in-app collaboration with recruiting teams, and powerful job-based analytics to optimize hiring.

"As companies look to scale and recruit competitive talent, hiring expertise and speed have become crucial for success. By combining the power of the Belong platform with dedicated support from domain-specific talent experts, we are offering companies exactly that,' said Vijay Sharma, CEO and Co-founder of Belong.

Launched as a pilot last year, Belong Experts is already being leveraged by some of the fastest-growing companies, including Uber, LendingKart, Xola and Postman.

According to Abhinav Asthana, CEO and Co-founder of Postman, "Belong Experts has been our go-to talent platform for over a year now. We have made offers for highly complex roles in about 10-14 days on the platform. It's, in fact, one of the few solutions that combines high quality candidates with low time-to-fill ratios for our recruiting team.'

To learn more about Belong Experts, visit http://belong.co/experts.

About Belong:

Belong is the world's first predictive outbound hiring solution that helps organizations discover, engage and hire top talent. Its powerful recruiting software Belong Hire helps talent acquisition teams build data-driven capabilities to spot highly relevant candidates, and proactively engage and hire them through personalized interactions. The company's newly-launched Belong Experts solution offers fast-growing companies end-to-end hiring support from domain-specific Talent Experts on top of Belong's predictive platform. Belong today supports the hiring needs of some of the world's most innovative enterprises, including Cisco, Amazon, ThoughtWorks and Tesco. For more information, please visit belong.co

About Matrix Partners India:

Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with INR 4,500 crore under management. The firm invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer market at the seed, early and early growth stages. The firm has invested in several market leading companies in the consumer technology space including Ola (local transportation), Quikr (online classifieds), Practo (digital health platform), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Mswipe (mobile POS), Limeroad (mobile social commerce marketplace) and Treebo (digital hotel chain) among others. Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China and India with US $4 billion under management. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in