Blume Ventures’ Passion Connect acquires executive search firm Basil Advisors

Passion Connect, a human resources services unit of venture capital firm Blume Ventures, has acquired internet industry-focused executive search services company Basil Advisors for an undisclosed sum.

Basil Advisors is expected to boost Blume’s portfolio companies’ hiring capabilities and provide value-added services such as executive search, international hiring and ex-founder hiring and acqui-hiring, Passion Connect said in a statement.

After the deal, the team at Passion Connect stands at 17 members across two cities.

This acquisition comes at a time when  several startups in Blume’s portfolio are set to enter the Series B and Series C stages of funding, the statement said.

“We built early teams for some of the biggest names like Flipkart, Delhivery, BigBasket, Udaan and Curefit among others and that has given us invaluable insights on the hiring pulse of early-stage startups, the need for hiring culture first and the impact it can create,” Prateek Srivastava, founder and CEO at Basil Advisors, said.

He said the company has worked with more than 150 startups at seed to growth stages over the past six years, helping them hire talent across functions, especially at the leadership level. 

Passion Connect has worked with over 80 companies and helped Blume portfolio companies hire more than 400 professionals across the country, the company said. It also provides talent branding services, strategises organisational design while also claiming to help founders cultivate a positive work culture.

Founded in 2016, the business unit is part of Mumbai-based Blume Ventures’ services network of Constellation Blu. The network consists of a team that solves “people problems” exclusively for Blume Ventures’ portfolio companies, the statement added.

Constellation Blu’s services include corporate services, transaction management and fund operations, according to its website.

The human resource services industry has seen a growth spurt in the past few years, with companies investing in emerging technologies to find the right talent. 

In January, India-focused investment management firm WestBridge Capital led a $30 million Series C round in global technology-based human resource company Phenom People.

In December, Gurugram headquartered human resources technology startup PeopleStrong HR Services acquired Qilo Technologies, a Noida-based company that operates an eponymous software-as-a-service (SaaS) performance management product.