Equiv.in hopes to redefine hiring by pushing the boundaries of diversity and inclusiveness

Organisations are moving beyond gender diversity to create greater inclusion by hiring persons with disabilities (PWDs), armed forces veterans, LGBTQ and senior citizens.

While there are exclusive job portals such as Sheroes, JobsForHer and Avtar for women and the recently launched job portal -- Pride Circle -- for the LGBTQ segment, there are none that provide talent profiles of candidates across the spectrum of the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) umbrella.

Equiv.in, India’s exclusive job portal for diverse talent that was launched last July to cater to the growing demand from corporates, offers listings of 63,000 women job seekers, 2,800 PWDs and 22 LGBTQ with plans to include senior citizens and army veterans this year.

“The definition of diversity is changing and has moved beyond women (gender diversity). Corporates are urging us to build a pool of diverse talent profiles that they can access to meet their D&I goals. We have facilitated 1,000 women hires and 24 PWD hires via Equiv.in. While majority of the women hires are mid-level profiles, 75 per cent of the PWD hires are orthopaedic cases, 20 per cent are hearing impaired and 10 per cent are vision impaired,” Naren Krishna, founder CEO of Equiv.in told BusinessLine . Krishna is also the founder CEO of Stockroom.io, a talent acquisition platform for technology talent.

Asked how many LGBTQ hires Equiv.in had enabled, Krishna said: “Corporates are still in the process of creating an inclusive environment with sensitivity training sessions, which once created, will pave the way for hiring from the LGBTQ talent pool. We will focus on facilitating a dialogue between the LGBTQ community and corporates to understand and explore their mutual requirements by hosting an event named Q-rious starting next year, for which we will partner with the Humsafar Trust.”

The start-up already hosts ‘Women Changemakers’, a career fair for women, enabling a total of 1,000 women hires. A virtual career fair for PWDs called ‘Enablers’ was introduced last year and it witnessed participation from 700 PWDs, with three companies, including IBM and Infosys, making 18 job offers.

“We are hosting the eighth edition of Women Changemakers on 20th July, where 1,200 registered job seekers and 18 companies will participate. The urban working women’s population stands at 11.2 million and we have just 63,000 listings. This represents a huge opportunity for us to grow this segment,” said Krishna.

Within a year of the launch, Equiv.in has onboarded 72 corporate customers with another 50 in the pipeline. McKinsey, ThoughtWorks, Societe Generale, Amazon, Wells Fargo, American Express, Dell, Infosys, Mphasis, Shell, Microsoft and Genpact are among its customers.

“We want Equiv.in to evolve into the ‘master service provider’ for D&I hiring across the entire spectrum. To grow our talent listings across the spectrum, tap diverse talent from Tier-2 cities, ramp up on digital marketing and technology, we are in talks to raise a Series A round, which we hope to close in September/October,” said Krishna.

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