JobsAhead gets Rs 11 crore funds injection

agencyfaqs! News Bureau

NEW DELHI

JobsAhead.com has just tied up its third round of funding. Chrysalis Capital and the ‘angel investors', who had earlier invested Rs 22 crore in the jobs portal, have pumped in another Rs 11 crore (US$ 2.5 million) earlier this week. Confirming the development, Puneet Dalmia, co-founder and CEO, JobsAhead, said, "The Rs 11 crore which we have raised in our third round, would take care of our growth plans for the next 12 to 18 months. However, depending on the pace of our expansion plans and the emerging market conditions, the feasibility of further rounds of funding is not ruled out."

To put things into perspective, Chrysalis Capital is an active venture investment firm with a capital pool of US$65 million. Chrysalis is focused on Internet, software and IT-enabled companies. It recently announced the launch of the second fund of US$ 125 million. Chrysalis had put in Rs 20 crore in JobsAhead in February last year, four months after the promoters raised Rs 2 crore from the angel investors to kickstart the operations of JobsAhead.

Viraj Chouhan, product manager, JobAhead, told agencyfaqs!, "Seventy five per cent of this Rs 11 crore has been put in by Chrysalis and the balance 25 per cent by the angel investors." He added that the fresh lease of funds will be deployed into three areas - strengthening the company's domestic business, expanding the company's operations internationally and in technology development. Alok Mittal, co-founder and COO, JobsAhead.com, said, "A major percentage of the fund would be used by JobsAhead to develop new online services for corporate clients and jobseekers."

When quizzed about the scope for growth in its online business, Mittal said, "We are pursuing a two-pronged strategy. On one hand, we want to enhance the current market leadership of JobsAhead in the domestic market and on the other hand we plan to aggressively take our international business operations to new markets."

Mittal elaborated, "Due to the tech slowdown in the US, JobsAhead is aggressively expanding its international operations to emerging markets in Europe and South East Asia. On the domestic front, we have a client base over 3,000 companies across different industry sectors, which is helping us ramp up our revenues, in spite of the concerns surrounding the IT sector."

Chouhan said that JobsAhead, which is currently earning revenues of Rs 50 lakh per month, hopes to end the year (December 2001) with revenue of Rs 15 crore.

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