Measuring Skills For The Right Hire: Techcircle Fastracker 2012 Mettl

Today, we are featuring Mettl – another Techcircle Fastracker 2012. Founded in 2010, Mettl is an assessment platform to measure, analyse and improve professional skills across multiple industries.

The startup sells relevant platforms to various companies and organisations who use those to measure and analyse career skills (for fresh recruitment and lateral hiring), training effectiveness and engagement. The product, delivered online through a SaaS-based pricing model, enables hiring managers to measure and track the skills of both pre-hires and existing employees.

Founded by Ketan Kapoor, an IIT Rourkee and IIM-Kolkata alumnus, and Tonmoy Shingal, a passout from IIT Kanpur and IIM-Bangalore, the company has raised angel rounds from Blume Ventures and other investors like Sasha Mirchandani, Puranjaya Singh, Sunil Sharma and Naveen Tewari. "But ideally, we would like the business to generate enough revenues to fund its own growth," the founders confide.

The idea of setting up Mettl came when the duo realised how career skills assessment remains grossly underdeveloped. "There is a huge scope to use innovative technology to make it easier, faster and better for measuring various skills," says Kapoor. "We started Mettl with the promise of bridging the employability gap which exists in India."

Mettl charges as per the assessments done or per candidate basis, starting from Rs 200. However, companies pay according to the number of individuals taking the tests and also the number of assessments. Even when an organisation uses the platform, no upfront payment is required. One can start using the platform in less than 5 minutes and then pay for it. "Our value proposition for our customers is simple and helps save time, effort and cost while improving quality," says Kapoor.

Mettl works closely with IT and education sector companies like Cognizant, Capgemini, Ericsson, InMobi,Cleartrip, ThinkLink, HirePro and Myntra. It is also in talks with a few companies in the banking and financial sector with a view to scaling up its business. "We will keep expanding our assessment reach across multiple industries across and multiple skill profiles," says Kapoor .

Geographic expansion is another focus area for the company. "Mettl is currently located in Gurgaon but we may soon open a couple of satellite offices in Bangalore and Singapore," informs Kapoor.

The founders are also keen to go in-depth as far as test subjects are concerned. For instance, under a broad category like IT, there will be various sub-categories and Mettl will offer new tests in areas like Java, Oracle and C++.

The company is also looking to ramp up its hiring. "Right from Day I, the biggest challenge is to get the right team in place. Since what we deliver is an ongoing exercise, we have to be in a hiring mode always," adds Kapoor.

Till now, Mettl has been extremely prudent in terms of cash allocation. The firm has invested heavily in product and technology portfolio, and now it intends to invest in sales and marketing as well.

"In terms of width and depth of our offering, Mettl competes with companies like SHL at a global level and firms like Merittrac in India," said Kapoor. "However, they have taken a different approach and consciously chosen not to opt for a manual service delivery model. They are solving most of the logistics challenges online," he clarifies.

Kapoor, however, would not comment on the revenues and declares, "We are very close to becoming a cash-positive company."