Ideal, a virtual assistant targeted to recruiters, announced that it has raised a $3 million seed round.
The round was led by former CEO and Group Head of Scotiabank’s Global banking and markets Mike Durland; BlueCat founders Michael Hyatt and Richard Hyatt; and the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund.
“We are thrilled to be able to work so closely with our investors and the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund. It is a huge vote of confidence and marks a very exciting time for us,” said co-founder and CEO Somen Mondal.
Ideal’s platform automates repetitive tasks like candidate sourcing, resume screening, shortlisting, and candidate outreach.
“There is a much higher demand for our AI screening technology from large companies in retail, banking, hospitality that are overwhelmed with applicants.”
“These funds are going directly to supporting our new and existing customers,” said COO and co-founder, Shaun Ricci. “We really excel at working with each customer and building out additional functionalities efficiently. Our product roadmap is ambitious and we’re looking forward to releasing new features to our customers.”
Ideal says that large employers like Walmart or Starbucks receive over one million resumes a year, and often, over 70 percent of these applications go untouched. As Ideal automating more of the tedious tasks, the idea is to free up recruiters’ time for more high-value work.
“The talent was already there, we just didn’t have the resources to unlock it. Ideal found a way to triple our pace and both the cost and time savings were immediately significant,” said Sarah Wilson, director of talent acquisition of Indigo, an early customer.
When Ideal raised a $2.5 million funding round in November 2015, it was a platform targeted to job seeking sales people looking for a role that best matched their own skillset.
“There is a much higher demand for our AI screening technology from large companies in retail, banking, hospitality that are overwhelmed with applicants, receiving thousands of resumes a week,” said Mondal when asked why the company pivoted. The company had developed a screening and automation technology with job boards, and started selling that software in the form of a subscription-based service — which eventually became the B2B business that Ideal is today.
“Working with high-volume hiring allows for a massive data set (millions of past resumes) and that much data has helped us train and fine-tune our AI much faster.”
“Ideal is taking on a problem that impacts a huge market. Companies across industries and around the world struggle with high-volume hiring. Ideal has an incredibly talented team that is well-positioned to play a role in Canada’s booming AI ecosystem,” said Scott Pelton, Investment Director at MaRS IAF.