HireHunch raises $500K in seed round led by Waveform Ventures

HireHunch, a Bengaluru-based B2B platform that offers interview-as-a-service, has announced raising $500,000 funding in a seed round led by Waveform Ventures. The tech recruitment platform has also been supported with investments from marquee angels including Alok Mittal, Saurabh Bansal, Ramneek Khurana, Deepak Singh Ahlawat, Kshitij Jain, Ram Kuppuswamy, Gunjan Srivastava, Ajay Gopalkrishnan, and more.

Founded by Nawal Mishra, Amit Kumar and Anjulika Pandey in 2020, HireHunch is a B2B platform focused on enabling the improvement of the tech recruitment funnel for its partners. According to this startup, it helps companies in improving their quality-of-hire through the platform’s two-pronged process (a hybrid of man and machine) by screening the best technical candidates for final interviewing.

This process enables the companies in making their hiring decisions in a cost-effective and timely manner, with the assurance of quality through unbiased, inclusive and fair technical analysis.

PedalStart raises funding led by AngelBay

PedalStart, an agnostic platform-driven startup accelerator and founders’ community, raised a strategic round led by AngelBay. Over the next 12 months, the company will aim to utilise these funds towards onboarding the core team and building technology with a target of growing this community to 5,000 startup enthusiasts. Investment platforms such as Faad Network and KapTable, a secondary marketplace for startup shares, were also a part of the round.

According to PedalStart, since inception it has guided over 1,000 startup enthusiasts and worked actively on 80 startup ideas out of which 20 have already reached the POC (proof of Concept) stage, and four have received investment commitments from angel investors and micro-VCs. The company has also onboarded over 30 successful startup founders and domain experts from the Indian startup ecosystem.

Metvy raises pre-Series A round from angels and Ivy Growth

Edtech startup Metvy has raised an undisclosed pre-Series A round of funding from multiple angel investors and Ivy Growth. 

This round of funding saw participation from angel investor such as Sourabh Chirimar (WhatFix, Ex-Google), Navreet Kaur (YouTube), Gaurav Kundarap (Google), Divya Rao (Google Pay), Jayakumar Babu, Pratik Shah, and Nikhil Gupta.

Metvy is a mentorship and learning ecosystem driven by communities and cohort-based courses. Founded by Shawrya Mehrotra and Rajan Luthra, it provides courses on entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, research, design and consulting led by mentors.

This is the third round of funding for Metvy which had previously raised from HostelFund and an incubator backed by Delhi government.

Stanza Living acquires Singularity Automation in an all cash deal

Stanza Living, a managed-accommodation provider, has acquired enterprise IoT platform Singularity Automation in an all cash deal, it said on Friday. 

The deal will help the Delhi-headquartered startup to speed-up its focus on developing highly-customised IoT-based solutions for the managed accommodation sector.

Bengaluru-based Singularity's founders and its core team will be joining Stanza Living after the acquisition, taking Stanza's employee count to more than 100.  The startup was founded in 2017 and is backed by IvyCap Ventures and Times Internet. 

"Technology has always been at the forefront of everything we do at Stanza Living. We look forward to customising their existing solutions and creating fresh, IoT-based platforms together, as we build a first-of-its-kind managed living ecosystem,” Anindya Dutta, MD and Co-founder, Stanza Living said.

Samunnati looks to strengthen leadership and talent in 2022

Samunnati, an agri-value chain enabler, said it plans to strengthen leadership and talent in 2022, in line with its strategy to double down on its offerings across the agri value chain. 

Presently, Samunnati has over 611 employees. It plans to bolster it further by adding 20 percent more talent in 2022 with close to 100 open positions across functions.

"With industry veterans and senior leaders joining our ranks, I am confident that we have the best-in-class team to bring Samunnati’s vision of unlocking India’s trillion dollar agri economy to life and make markets work for the smallholder farmers," said Anilkumar SG, Founder. 

The Chennai-headquartered company has a presence in more than 100 agri value chains spread over 22 states in India.

Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment appoints Sugandh Saxena as its first CEO

Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE), an industry association for fintech lenders in India, appointed Sugandh Saxena, as its first CEO. 

She will be responsible to drive the FACE’s efforts to engage in an active dialogue with the policymakers, regulators, digital lenders and other market participants to build an ethical, safe lending ecosystem for consumers, and to work with stakeholders in developing choices for the consumers as part of financial inclusion. 

Sugandh previously headed self-regulation and compliance at Microfinance Institutions Network, a self-regulatory organisation for the microfinance sector. 

"I look forward to working with regulators, policy makers, our member companies and potential member participants, and other industry stakeholders in creating an adequate framework to empower consumers, and to make India's digital lending industry a global benchmark," Sugandh said in a statement.

8.6 pc malicious IP addresses were located in India: OpenText 2022 Threat Report

In its 2022 BrightCloud Threat Report, which outlines key data points and trends affecting small and large businesses worldwide, OpenText said 4,300 of the top 50,000 (8.6 percent) malicious IP addresses were located in India. 

India had 2,600 convictions in 2021 out of the top 50,000 malicious IP addresses, it said in a release. 

Mark J Barrenechea, OpenText CEO and CTO, said “With security risks escalating worldwide and a persistent state of ‘unprecedented’ threats, compromises are inevitable. This year’s findings reiterate the need for organisations to deploy strong multi-layered security defences to help them remain at the heart of cyber resilience and circumvent even the most creative cybercriminals.” 

Exterro introduces free online forensic imaging training for law enforcement officers in India

US-headquartered software company Exterro on Friday said it is offering free training for its FTK Imager software to law enforcement personnel to support their use of forensic tools in the fight against crime.

FTK Imager is a forensic tool, used by law enforcement agencies across the world.

The free, one-day classes will be offered in online and classroom formats over the next three months until June 30th, 2022, after which it will be freely available on demand to law enforcement customers. It will be made available via an application process, as numbers will be limited.  

Tata-funded application security SaaS company Indusface recognised in Gartner report

Indusface, a Tata-funded application security SaaS company, has been recognised as customers' choice globally in Gartner Peer Insights 'Voice of Customer' Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) report.

It is the only vendor to also be a customers' choice in all the segments. The report synthesises Gartner Peer Insights' reviews into insights for IT decision-makers

"Our cutting-edge solutions, round-the-clock monitoring, and management of application security needs ensure complete peace of mind for clients and the freedom to scale their business. It is this unmatched combination that has led Indusface to be acknowledged as the only vendor to be named Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice' in all the seveb segments for Web Application and API Protection," said Ashish Tandon, CEO and Founder, Indusface.