They’ve raised $1.2m and built a chatbot used by DBS, Accenture, Singtel recruiters

Image credit: Impress.ai

Chatbots have been much hyped about, thanks to advancements in natural language processing in recent years. But they’ve often been gimmicks with no actual proof of benefits for users. All that, however, could be changing.

Impress.ai, a Singapore startup that’s building a chatbot for recruiters, has raised a US$1.2 million seed round led by Reapra.  It has 15 clients at the moment, including Accenture, DBS Bank, insurer NTUC Income, and Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) – all of which process a huge number of job applications each month.

A spokesperson for Impress.ai told Tech in Asia that the company is seeing an average monthly recurring revenue of US$22,000, a figure that’s growing around 20 percent month-on-month. It charges large enterprises starting from around US$1,800 a month. It’s testing out a more affordable package for small and medium-sized enterprises and has an API for jobs boards in the works.

Impress.ai aims to automate as much of the workflow of recruiters as possible.  Its chatbot can evaluate and shortlist job applicants, and then do screening interviews with each person over text. It can even answer applicants’ questions about the company.

“We have saved up to 40 man-hours per month,” says James Loo, head of the talent acquisition group at DBS.

Impress.ai co-founders (left to right): CTO Vaisagh Viswanathan, COO Amrith Dhananjayan, and CEO Sudhanshu Ahuja / Photo credit: Impress.ai

Impress.ai’s technology can be integrated into the customer’s workflow in four to six weeks, depending on the number of integrations and the complexity of the chatbot.

While there are a lot of recruitment chatbots out there, Impress.ai differentiates itself in the following ways:

• It allows users to create their own chatbots for specific job positions.
• It aims to release chatbots in Asian languages like Mandarin or Japanese, making it more suited for Asia.
• Beyond screening interviews, it can do deeper interviews with candidates to gauge their competency for the job.
• It can be used for both inbound (when candidates apply for a listed job) and outbound hiring (when recruiters seek out candidates).
• Its AI algorithms are developed internally, which makes private cloud or on-premise implementations possible.

The startup, which has 20 staff, is planning to raise a US$3 million to US$5 million series A round within the next few months.