Introduction

Intervue is a startup founded in 2019 allows organisations to save engineering bandwidth by taking up candidate evaluations. They have made technical hiring process easy. Companies give their tech interviews to them. Engineers from known companies take the interviews on their platform & share a recommendation about the candidate. Multiple candidates get interviewed async. Bringing the recruiting cycle down from 30 days to 5 days with a recommendation-to-hire ratio as high as 90%.

An Indian Startup Intervue has identified a problem that when companies need to hire any resource, for example hiring an engineer, then Company HR issues vacancy advertisement and when resource comes for interview then after HR round, Company engineer will take technical round. Suppose there may be 100 persons coming for that vacancy then Company engineer will take interview of all 100 persons coming for interview. For this whole interview process, Company engineer does not get any additional monetary benefit. Intervue has created panel of experts from top multinational companies which take interview on weekends and get paid for this interview process.

Founder’s journey of Intervue

Intervue was founded by Rahul Arora and Pushpinder Singh Rautela. Rahul is a software engineer by trade and a native of Ludhiana, Punjab. Pushpinder is a Ghaziabad-born software engineer as well. They used to work at PayTm together and had been friends for five years.

Rahul Arora graduated from the DAV Institute of Engineering and Technology in Jalandhar with a Bachelor of Technology (BTech) in Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering. Rahul studied at this institution between 2009 and 2013. They pursued a non-medical course of study at DAV Public School from 2007 to 2009 before that. Rahul has received an ITIL V3 Foundation Certified Professional certification from APMG International in 2013. His realisation that, as a software developer, he does not have to pay extra for the time-consuming and laborious process of interviewing candidates gave him the idea to launch Intervue. According to Intervue's founders, whereas it typically takes 45 days to fill a position, Intervue can do so in just 7 days.

CTO Pushpendra Rautela graduated from Delhi University with a Bachelor of Science in Science and works as a software developer as well. Both Pushpendra Rautela and Rahul Arora were software engineers with Paytm at one point.

Business Model of Intervue

While hiring prospects, they are helping businesses with two issues. The first is the lack of an interviewer on hand, and the second is conducting interviews on schedule. The platform's founders disclosed that a number of well-known tech firms use it to communicate with engineers online and hire them through their Intervue platform. Interviewees are compensated as well.

Using the Interview as a Service platform, Intervue, businesses may contract out their interviewing. They are given access to an interviewer who may conduct interviews on their behalf and provide an in-depth report. The goal of the 2019 startup Intervue is to simplify the entire interview process, from take-home assignments to in-person interviews. For the businesses seeking candidates, they provide a tech-enabled service platform. These applicants are located by Intervue on their behalf, after which qualified candidates are forwarded to the main business. Seventy percent of Intervue's candidates are chosen by the parent company.

Intervue has streamlined the technical interview process with their innovative idea. They have also integrated with multiple other platforms that are necessary including Calendly, Notion, Recruitee, Greenhouse, etc. Notably, by adopting Intervue, the average position fulfilment time has been reduced from 45 days to 7 days. Typically, seven out of ten recommended applicants are chosen.

At the time of their proposal, Intervue had more than 100 businesses on their platform. The platform's founders revealed that they use it to conduct more than 500 interviews every day. They also declare themselves to be the quickest online programming environment in the world. Additionally, their software aids in preventing cheating throughout the interview stages. An interviewer typically earns between ₹60,000 and ₹70,000 a month. Furthermore, you get paid right away for conducting interviews.

Intervue Sales & Previous Funding

Intervue's revenue for the 21st and 22nd fiscal years was ₹88 Lakhs. After that, they had an 888% increase as they ended the most recent fiscal year, FY22–23, with ₹8.7 crores. The company estimates that it would end this fiscal year with between ₹13 and 15 crores. Up to September 2023, they have already generated ₹4.2 crores in revenue. After giving the interviewer 40–50% of their net revenue, they are left with 50–60%. Since their founding, they have conducted more than 40,000 interviews.

Intervue and Titan Capital raised ₹88 lakhs at ₹7 crores in their first fundraising round in February 2021. The second round, which raised ₹5 crores at a valuation of ₹120 crore, took place in July 2022.

Apart from their outsourcing service, companies can also

1. asses candidates in real-time through their coding environment,

2. hire assessments across various batches.

3. Send projects with candidates to test their skills and knowledge.

Intervue Shark Tank Pitch and Deal

During their Shark Tank India season 3 appearance, Rahul Arora and Pushpender Rautela discussed specifics of their platform.

Rahul began by presenting the perspective of a senior software engineer. He explained that in order to work for a company, a senior software developer must go through multiple interviews. Rahul added that by utilising their technology, this interview process can be made more efficient and less time-consuming.

At a 150 crore valuation, the founder asked INR 1.5 crores for 1% share.

Here are a few significant exchanges he had with the Sharks such as Rahul gave a demonstration of his platform in response to Aman Gupta's question on what problem their technology is actually solving, Namita Thapar (Executive Director - Emcure Pharmaceuticals) walked away from the arrangement since she didn't like their business style and procedure. Vineeta Singh (Co-founder & CEO - Sugar Cosmetics) enquired about their methodology, to which Rahul provided a perceptive and gratifying response, Rahul provided their sales information for the last three fiscal years in response to Deepinder Goyal's request to gauge their scale.

With a corporate valuation of ₹75 crores, Aman Gupta (Co-founder and CMO - boAt) makes the initial offer of ₹1.5 crores for 2% of the company. The second offer, made by Anupam Mittal (Founder & CEO - People Group, Shaadi.com), is for the same amount, but at 3%. Deepinder Goyal (Co-founder & CEO - Zomato) was interested in this area and wanted to make a contribution, but Aman Gupta encouraged him to join deal together rather than do it alone.

Together, Deepinder and Aman contribute ₹5 crores for 10% of the business. Aman would provide ₹1.5 Crores, with Deepinder covering the remaining amount. Furthermore, Deepinder says that there would be no negotiating this offer. The entrepreneur indicated he would not be able to meet their last round's $15 million valuation, so he countered all three sharks to come together for ₹5 crores for 4% equity. He would not be able to come under the valuation of their last round of $15 million valuation. Deepinder and Anupam go out after hearing that, but Aman offers ₹1.5 Crores for 2%, to which Rahul countered that with ₹1.5 crores for 3%, which Aman refused. After some perspective from other sharks, Rahul eventually accepted the deal of Aman Gupta.

Intervue got a deal of INR 1.5 Crores for 2% equity at a valuation of INR 75 crore from Aman Gupta in Shark Tank India season 3.