Having already secured clients like Mahindra Logistics, The Good Glamm Group, The Media Ant, and international firm EPIC Investment Partners, Northtstarz.ai operates in the global HR tech market, projected to breach the $88.38 Bn mark by 2033
At a time when generative AI (GenAI) has become a crucial cog in the wheel of corporations and conglomerates to improve their operational efficiency, the human resources (HR) department stands to benefit like never before.
From the effective screening of hundreds and thousands of resumes to automating interviews, the emerging technology has much to offer to the department that deserves to be heard at the table, much like a strategic business partner.
However, AI adoption in the HR function has lagged behind other departments. While several factors contribute to this, the primary reason is the limited availability of GenAI models. Notably, existing solutions largely focus on basic resume summarisation and application processes and fail to go beyond these tasks.
This is where Bengaluru-based Northtstarz.ai steps in to fill the gap. With its small language models, built in-house and trained on 40,000 real-life interviews, the startup has upped the hiring game for startups and enterprises, allowing them to find the right talent that could align with their vision.
After working with recruiters and experts for almost two years, gathering data and building its models, Northtstarz.ai recently raised a small pre-seed funding of $250K (INR 2 Cr) from a few angel investors and started the commercialisation of its GenAI-based recruitment platform in January.
Having already secured clients like Mahindra Logistics, The Good Glamm Group, The Media Ant, and international firm EPIC Investment Partners, Northtstarz.ai operates in the global HR tech market, projected to breach the $88.38 Bn mark by 2033. In addition to its current clients, the startup is piloting its product with 50 companies, including major players in BFSI, food, ecommerce, and coworking sectors.
Now, it could come as a surprise that the birth of Northtstarz.ai wasn't foretold and is rather a byproduct of a timely pivot.
The Genesis Of Northtstarz.ai
Northtstarz.ai was founded in 2022 by industry veterans and long-time friends Avinash Singh, Rajiv Ranjan, and Saurabh Sisodia, who bring a cumulative experience of more than 60 years.
While CEO Singh is a serial entrepreneur and a sales veteran, cofounder and chief product officer Ranjan has worked with major banks across India, Poland, Malaysia, and the Philippines. CTO and cofounder Sisodia has worked closely with giants like Oracle, Amazon, and Paytm, delivering tech solutions.
Even though the trio of friends hailed from different industries, they have long shared a common peeve -- the lack of industry-ready talent in the country.
This real-world pain point inspired them to build an HR tech platform, Interview Vision, to help the fresh-out-of-college talent evaluate themselves on the employability scale and understand and improve the critical skills needed to succeed in job interviews.
However, they soon realised that the model was not scalable. With this revelation, the trio of friends started focussing on recruiters rather than resources. Back to the drawing board, the cofounders decided to build a centralised cloud platform that could make the hiring process for HR professionals easier and efficient. It was precisely at this point that Northtstarz.ai was born.
In their quest to offer something unique to the HR fraternity, the cofounders today claim to be cutting above the rest.
Speaking to Inc42, CEO Singh said, "Most GenAI HR solutions today simply wrap around existing large language models. If you ask them technical questions, they will respond, but they have limitations. We are among only three or four companies globally that train our own models to provide a comprehensive employability assessment."
Inside Northtstarz.ai's Working
The platform allows recruiters to post job openings, with GenAI assistants suggesting relevant skills based on prompts and generating role-specific questions.
The platform enables recruiters to post a new job with the help of GenAI assistants, making the entire process efficient and seamless. These assistants are also capable of generating role-specific questions, allowing HR professionals to choose the best from the talent pool.
Once the job is posted, applicants can apply and conduct a 15-20 minute virtual interview at their convenience. On the back-end, based on the scores given by recruiters and the large sets of data available, the platform shortlists top candidates. This helps lighten the first phase of the screening process.
"Our platform can enable the recruiter or the company to find people who are not only great at meeting their KRAs but also the ones who will walk that extra mile to deliver," he said.
He added that soft skills like innovation, adaptability, and collaboration are key elements that most candidates lack. Given that recruiters or hiring managers are not trained interviewers, they could make wrong hiring choices. This is also an area where the platform is capable of evaluating candidates.
"We conducted over 40,000 interviews, collected answers to around 100 expert-approved questions, had them manually scored, and used this data to train our AI model. Over two years, we've reached 82% accuracy in mimicking expert evaluations," said Singh.
Notably, Northstarz.ai has trained its models in six key industries -- BFSI, IT, IT-enabled services, staff augmentation, aviation, and hospitality. These industries account for 45% of new employment in India annually. The startup plans to expand into more sectors soon.
"We have become the perfect tool for companies that require candidates 0 to 6 years of work experience. This is also where the mass hiring and churn take place," Singh said.
He added that NBFCs make for an attractive proposition for the startup as this sector has a high attrition rate.
Moving on, according to Singh, many job seekers now rely on LLM-based applications to answer interview questions. This makes it difficult for recruiters to gauge the true abilities of their potential talent. To address this, Northtstarz.ai has built models capable of detecting AI-generated responses during interviews.
The platform is mobile-friendly and complies with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) guidelines, ensuring data security.
Currently, Northstarz.ai offers three pricing plans to its clients -- INR 12,500 for 50 interviews a month, INR 23,500 for 100 interviews, and INR 63,000 for 300 interviews.
According to Singh, despite its pricing, which is on par with international markets, its clients willfully bear the cost as the platform helps them cull the burden of dealing with thousands of resumes, all while enabling recruiters' efficiency by at least 3X.
What's The Big Plan?
The startup expects a steady revenue starting March and has its sights set on boarding 40-50 customers over the next six months, each paying an average of INR 30,000 per month. Achieving this goal will position it for a larger funding round.
Meanwhile, a major goal is to build an Agentic AI platform that will go beyond the recruitment process to help CEOs with corporate performance management. Besides, it plans to ramp up international pilots and collaborations in the coming months.
While the startup has focussed on building its models to step up the hiring game, the competition is growing in the space. Zoho Recruit, for example, is also using AI to help companies make smarter hiring decisions. Meanwhile, startups such as Stark.ai also command a stack of next-generation GenAI-based HR tech solutions. In addition, HR tech startup Darwinbox has recently raised $140 Mn to deepen its tech stack.
At an international level, Northtstarz.ai faces competition from Apriora, Interviewer.AI, as well as global hiring platforms such as LinkedIn and foundit.
In a space where innovation is moving at a breakneck speed, sustaining its technological edge and proving strong revenue traction will be critical for Northtstarz.ai if it aspires to a mark in the global HR tech industry.
