Singapore career discovery platform Glints raised US$6.8 million in a Series B funding round, after impressing investors with their 6-time revenue growth in the past year.
The round was led by prominent Southeast Asia venture capital firm Monk’s Hill Ventures.
It was also joined by returning investors Wavemaker Partners, Fresco Capital and 99.co founder Darius Cheung, along with new investors including Hong Kong-based fund, MindWorks.
With the new funds, they’re planning for expansion to Vietnam and Hong Kong next.
Glints’ previous Series A round was held in 2016, with S$2.7 million raised.
According to Tech in Asia, this latest funding round puts the company’s valuation at about US$15.2 million.
More Than Just A Job Search Portal
We reached out to Glints co-founder and CEO Oswald Yeo, who cited finding “the right growth model” for helping them achieve a 6-time year-on-year revenue increase from 2018 to 2019.
He said it took them numerous “pivots and experiments with different models” to finally stick the landing, ever since Glints was first launched in 2015.
Classifieds, recruitment events, and white labels were some methods they explored over the years.
“In 2018 we finally found the right growth model of taking a full-stack tech-enabled approach to solving the recruitment problem, [and] we were lucky to have a team who stuck with [this new] vision,” Oswald said.
He further explains this full-stack approach:
It combines the skills of experienced recruiters with the efficiency of technology, by automating certain recruitment processes such as candidate sourcing, matching and follow-ups.
Glints only charges employers upon making a successful hire through their online job listings, which are free to put up.
This way, Oswald says they’ve made costs “40% to 100% cheaper” than what employers would pay with traditional recruiters.
He also boasts that Glints helps employers hire in an average of 28 days while the industry standard is “40 to 50 days”, something clients like Gojek, FWD Insurance and UOB Bank have enjoyed.
Besides connecting potential employees to companies, what differentiates Glints from typical job search portals is their focus on cultivating young talents.
In Singapore, they have programmes under partnership with the various polytechnics to guide students through seeking internships or full-time jobs upon graduation.
Realising that there’s a “shortage of skilled talent in certain verticals”, Glints has upped their effort to go beyond just sourcing candidates, to developing the candidate supply as well.
For example, they noticed a lack of IT talents in Indonesia—currently their only other market—so they set up a coding bootcamp Glints Academy to “train young Indonesians to become developers”.
After the bootcamp, Glints then matches high-performing talents to good job opportunities.
Now, the fresh funds from their Series B round will help Glints work towards similar impacts regionally in Vietnam and Hong Kong.
“We are focused on continuing to build up a great team and product to accelerate growth even further,” said Oswald.
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