Malaysian social recruiting startup Tribehired closes USD 560K round led by TNF Ventures

TribeHired, a social recruitment website started by a team from Malaysia, announced that it has closed SGD 696K (USD 560K) in early stage funding led by TNF Ventures through the Singapore government’s Technology Incubation Scheme. Angel investors Ben Ball and Ben Chew also contributed.

A graduate of startup accelerator JFDI.Asia‘s inaugural bootcamp, TribeHired is currently in beta with several thousand job seekers in Malaysia. It is also being used by companies such as Zalora, Lazada, fellow JFDI.Asia grad Flocations, and Brandtology.

The attraction of TribeHired lies in how it taps on social networks for hiring: Users can receive recommendations from warm contacts — essentially people they have a personal relationship with. This has the supposed effect of increasing the quality and reliability of job applicants.

The investment money will be used towards growing the number of both job seekers and employers on the platform. It will also accelerate international expansion once its beta phase is over.

Both Bens are no stranger to the angel investment scene. Besides being investors in JFDI.Asia, Ball has also funded Flocations while Chew has invested in a yet-to-be-launched mobile learning company.

This development marks the seventh JFDI startup that has received funding either during or after the first-ever bootcamp, which had 11 participants in total. All in all, these companies have raised USD 2.32M.

TNF Ventures, a new angel investment group, has also been busy lately, announcing six-figure (USD) deals with Mogi, Next-5, TradeHero, and Flocations.

Before scoring this fresh round, TribeHired had received seed funding from Cradle Fund, a Malaysian government agency that supports tech startups. The company is founded by Devan Singaram.

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