Staffing start-up Xpheno to raise $5-6 m

Xpheno, a Bengaluru-based start-up focussing on hiring specialists in mid-level positions, plans to raise $5-6 million by January.

The 45-day-old company was started by A Kamal Karanth, former Managing Director, Kelly Services India, along with ET Anil Kumar, former Managing Director, RGF India.

They have jointly invested ₹4 crore in the new venture. The external funds will be used to expand across all metros and build a technology platform that can serve talent and client organisations efficiently, Karanth told BusinessLine .

In the first stage, the company is looking at anchor investors. The firm has already received offers from a couple of ‘strategic’ high networth individuals who have been in the sector and can get venture capital, he said.

Karanth said the three major reasons for founding Xpheno were: engineering demand, diminishing of bench strength (which is going to staffing companies), and increasingly short tenure of professionals, with people changing jobs frequently at CXO levels.

This means, senior-level managers are not hired by companies on their own but through external help as many of these hirings are confidential, he said.

“We will focus on meeting the shortage of specialised skills in emerging technologies that presents significant growth opportunity. We do not want to be the largest employer.

“The goal is to create a company for technology professionals.

“In the next two years, we want to be a ₹100-crore company and deploy nearly 2,000 specialists in information technology, life sciences and engineering sectors,” he said.

Karanth said Xpheno is currently working with nearly 30 clients and plans to add another 200 the next six months.

“We are looking at candidates with a month salary of ₹80,000-1 lakh.”

The company has a database of around 45,000 resumes, each of them with an average experience of at least 10 years, he said.

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