Kerala Angel Network invests in two south Indian startups

Two south Indian start-ups, Kerala-based talent-hiring venture, Zappyhire and Chennai-based digital home-cooking firm Cookd, have received investment from the Kerala Angel Network (KAN), an initiative of TiE Kerala.

Further to the investment, TiE Kerala has also nominated Zappyhire to present as a 'TiEtan' at the TiE Global Summit (TGS) in Dubai on 15 and 16 of December. TGS offers a great networking opportunity for startups for next-level fundraising as well as market access.

The Kochi-based Zappyhire, founded in 2018, is an intelligent recruitment platform that helps enterprises screen, engage, and hire the best talent faster, using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Founded in 2020, the digital-first cooking brand Cookd in the country focuses on making cooking at home easy, efficient, and fun.

Cookd has raised Rs 4.40 crore, from KAN, Konglo Ventures, and their existing investors, meanwhile, Zappyhire has raised Rs 3.71 crore from KAN, Hedge Finance and other angel investors, KAN said in a release.

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Ajit A Moopan, the lead investor and president of KAN said, India does not have many brands that go beyond posting recipes online to increase their following.

"Cookd shows a lot of promise in terms of integrating content, technology, and e-commerce to build an end-to-end solution," Moopan said.

Aathitiyan, founder and CEO of Cookd said the company aims to build one of the largest home-cooking brands, based on insights gathered from the fast-growing community of home cooks.

"Our new range of Cookd products will help our users have their favourite dishes faster and more accurately," Aathitiyan said.

Meanwhile, the Zappyhire platform auto pre-screen and rank the candidates from a large application pool using semantic resume parser and AI-enabled video interview.

"The platform helps eliminate the human effort on scheduling/ rescheduling interviews and post-offer-engagement to reduce the offer-drop-out ratio using conversation AI. It also acts as 'SIRI-for-recruiter' by suggesting right recommendations for recruitment activities based on the historical data of the organization," the release said.

Zappyhire has recently associated with many government-sponsored digital hiring initiatives.

The co-founders of Zappyhire, Jyothis K S and Deepu Xavier, said the investment will boost their plan to grow as a global leader in automated recruitment.

"We are super excited to close the investment round and look forward to working with marquee investors and exploring all possible synergies. We are on a mission to revolutionize talent acquisition for business through our SaaS platform," they said.

KAN brings together a number of angel investors from across Kerala, who share a passion for nurturing and investing in start-ups and early-stage businesses with exponential growth potential. Started in 2019, KAN has made a number of strategic investments across sectors.