The company intends to utilise the funding to enhance its data science capabilities to speed up hiring processes for candidates
Karat has developed a cloud-based platform known as Interviewing Cloud. (Credit: NordWood Themes on Unsplash)
US-based technical interviewing startup Karat has raised $110m funding in a Series financing round that valued the company at $1.1bn.
Led by Tiger Global, the funding round saw participation from Norwest Venture Partners, 8VC, Exor, Base Partner and Sempervirens Fund.
With the latest funding, Karat has taken its total capital raise to nearly $170m.
The company intends to utilise the proceeds to enhance its data science capabilities to unlock insights for companies and speed up hiring processes for candidates.
Karat has developed a cloud-based platform known as Interviewing Cloud to help companies to free up the time spent by their developers in conducting interviews.
The platform consists of a network of developers who will be able to conduct interviews on behalf of companies worldwide.
Karat’s purpose-built interviewing technology is designed to help developers deliver predictive interviews at scale.
Karat co-founder and CEO Mohit Bhende said: “Just like the public cloud moved everyone from private computing to shared infrastructure, Karat’s Interviewing Cloud is upending the old way of do-it-yourself interviewing that eats into valuable engineering time and fails to delight candidates.”
According to the company, companies invest $60bn of their engineering time annually in conducting interviews to hire software engineers.
Despite that huge investment, organisations find difficulties in interviewing and hiring at the scale and speed that is needed to compete for top talent, it said.
Bhende said: “Most organizations aren’t able to conduct enough interviews with the quality and consistency needed to meet hiring targets and differentiate the candidate experience. We call this the Interview Gap. The Interviewing Cloud closes it.”
Karat said that the world’s biggest companies like Ford Motor, Bank of America, Schlumberger, and Amgen are turning to its platform to transform their technical hiring, as digital transformation speeds up.
The company expects the latest funding to help accelerate the adoption of the Interviewing Cloud for technical hiring.