WorkLLama Secures $50 Million in Funding
March 10, 2023 – WorkLLama, technology provider of an AI-driven, talent marketing, relationship management, and direct sourcing suite, has secured $50 million in investments. With the new funds in place, the company says it expects to continue growing its team, accelerate product enhancements, focus strategic acquisitions over the next 12 months, invest in continued automation, and continue to expand its presence across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. “A customer’s No. 1 asset is its people, and this latest round of investment in WorkLLama cements our position in the market and allows us to further solve their No. 1 challenge—access to talent and delivering on our promise to look at talent holistically,” said Sudhakar Maruvada, founder and CEO of WorkLLama. “Our platform makes it simple to find, engage, and nurture talent, leading to a superior user experience for both customers and candidates alike. This means access to engaged talent ready to work for your organization and invested in doing so.”
“It was a great pleasure working with Sudhakar, Saleem, and their team to leverage their experience in total talent management to find the ideal capital partner for the next phase of WorkLLama’s growth,” said Allen Born, director of Fairmount Partners, which served as exclusive financial advisor to WorkLLama. “We see a bright future for the company and wish the WorkLLama team continued success.”
“Today’s enterprises, and the staffing agencies that support them, are becoming increasingly reliant on new ways to find and engage talent,” WorkLLama said. “It’s WorkLLama’s goal to help connect talent with roles that are meaningful and allow them to engage easily with brands in their chosen field. WorkLLama’s talent marketing and relationship management capabilities, coupled with its conversational chatbot, Sofi, crowdsourced referral engine, and dynamic talent communities, mean people, suppliers, and companies are connected faster than ever before.”
“WorkLLama helps companies leverage their own brand to create powerful candidate experiences. Existing talent channels are underperforming, and organizations are struggling to find quality talent for open roles, making workforce planning a challenge,” said Saleem Khaja, co-founder and COO of WorkLLama. “This additional funding means we can continue to invest in our enterprise-grade platform, empowering customers and candidates with the proficiency they deserve and one simple, unified way to manage it all.”
Since its founding in 2016, the WorkLLama team has grown to over 100 employees with customers across four continents. It delivered, on average, a 20 percent external labor cost reduction and a 66 percent reduction in time-to-hire for customers.
Investment Funding
Investors are pouring money into recruiting solutions businesses, especially those with a psychology and data science component. Here’s a look at some other recent funding deals secured by these companies from the Hunt Scanlon Media archives:
ShiftKey, a Dallas-based healthcare recruiting company, has closed on a funding round sponsored by majority investor Lorient Capital, valuing the company in excess of $2 billion. Crunchbase News reported the round was for $300 million. Lorient’s investment was completed through a continuation vehicle that was led by the Ares Management Secondaries funds and Pantheon. Additional investors participating along with Lorient, Ares, and Pantheon include Clearlake Capital and Health Velocity Capital.
Chicago-headquartered referral recruiting service Hunt Club has raised $40 million Series B round co-led by WestCap and Sator Grove. The investment round follows Hunt Club’s $10 million Series A financing in October 2021, and will fuel the company’s national expansion, technology platform enhancements, and broaden its community of over 20,000 business leaders who help connect the most innovative companies to the world’s top candidates. “We’re reimagining the entire talent process. Top talent leaders are not only hard to find, but they are hard to reach – and traditional recruiting firms aren’t equipped to innovate for their customers,” said Nick Cromydas, co-founder and CEO of Hunt Club. “Our technology is bridging that gap, introducing a personalized approach to helping companies change the way they approach talent acquisition. Hunt Club is proud to partner with WestCap, a premier growth equity firm led by a team that has founded, invested in, and operated tech-enabled marketplaces such as Airbnb for over 20 years.”
JobGet, a mobile app for hourly workers, has secured $52 million in Series B funding including $12 million in venture debt financing. JAZZ Venture Partners and Sanabil Investments co-led the round, with participation from Pillar VC and numerous other investors. “Our app is just the beginning,” said Tony Liu, co-founder and CEO. “We are building a new type of platform that enables deeper relationships between our talented hourly workers and hiring managers, with intelligent technology connecting both to better opportunities.” “We’re delighted to continue to support JobGet’s explosive growth,” said Zack Lynch, managing partner, JAZZ Venture Partners. “The company has deepened its executive bench with rich expertise that will turbocharge their efforts to transform the job seeking experience for hourly workers.”
SeekOut has announced a $115 million series C funding round led by Tiger Global Management. The round values the Seattle-based company – an artificial intelligence-powered talent search engine – at more than $1.2 billion. “The Great Resignation remains top of mind for both employees and employers as we enter 2022,” said Matthew Merker, research manager, talent acquisition and strategy at IDC. “The way employees look for work opportunities has fundamentally changed, and employers need to rethink how they find new talent and retain existing talent. SeekOut’s data-driven Talent 360 platform offers organizations an advanced set of capabilities that help ease this transition and redefine enterprise talent optimization moving forward.”
Hirewell, a Chicago-based talent acquisition firm, secured an investment of $21 million from Prytek, a global investment firm with expertise in integrating global services firms with cutting-edge technologies. Prytek will provide capital to enable Hirewell to accelerate its organic growth and integrate technology into its managed recruiting services. As part of this investment, Hirewell will acquire ICV, a Tel Aviv-based software company. “The talent acquisition space has evolved significantly over the past 10 years, but technology has yet to truly disrupt the industry,” said Matt Massucci, founder and CEO of Hirewell. “Recruiters increasingly rely on multiple platforms, most of which don’t integrate or have limited functionality, and some of which actually compete with the recruiters they claim to support. The ability to combine best-in-class recruiters with cutting-edge technology will equip us to be the ideal recruiting partner for companies that are serious about finding top talent. We are thrilled to partner with Prytek to take that step and continue delivering powerful results to our clients.”
Related: LCap Group Invests in Rowan Executive Search
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
