HR tech company Phenom People announces $30M Series C

Ambler-based human resources tech company Phenom People announced Thursday that it had raised a $30 million Series C round of fundraising to continue developing its products and do quite a bit of hiring.

The round is led by WestBridge Capital, an investment firm with locations in Mauritius, Bangalore and California. Also participating are New York-based AllianceBernstein Private Credit Investors’ Growth Stage Capital and a handful of existing investors, including Bryn Mawr’s Karlani Capital.

The HR tech company last fundraised in 2018, announcing a $22 million Series B to allow the org to expand its operations to Europe and the Asia Pacific.

This time around, the raise will go toward continuing to expand its tech, the Phenom Talent Experience Management Platform, and continue growth of the company. The platform currently takes into account four stakeholders — candidate, recruiter, employee and management — to reduce time to hire and cost per hire.

“Global organizations are shifting their spend from legacy singular HR tools to data-driven, intelligent talent experience platforms,” said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and cofounder of Phenom People, in a statement. “CHROs [chief human resources officers] can make an investment in a modern approach — connecting every interaction across the talent lifecycle for candidates, recruiters, employees and management.”

Phenom People’s current employee count is around 500 people across the globe, and about 200 people in its Ambler office. VP of Marketing Jonathan Dale told Technical.ly the local office is aiming to grow by about 75 people during 2020, likely in roles relating to sales, marketing and customer success.

Dale said that when looking for fundraisers, finding a firm that understood the importance of Phenom’s company culture was extremely important to them.

“We exist to help people find the right job,” he said. “It’s so important to us, and we wanted investors who felt the same way. We’re not looking for investors who just cared to turn around money as quickly as we could.”

Sumir Chadha, founder and managing director at WestBridge Capital said that Phenom’s technology is “unrivaled” in the HR tech marketplace.

“Their solution is transforming and progressing HR in ways that point solutions and acquired technologies do not,” Chadha said in a press release. “This matches the market direction towards experience management for talent.”

The company is also currently working on producing its third Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)-accredited conference from March 3 to 5, called IAMPHENOM. The three-day conference will consist of recruiting training, and sessions on topics such as the future of talent attraction and implementing company culture.

Much of the company’s work lately is on further building the experience around applying, hiring and employee development, Dale said. It could be that a company has a user-assisting bot to answer questions while an applicant is applying through a company’s website or an auto-fill option for the online application.

“When you add that type of experience to a job search, it changes how a candidate feels about the job,” Dale said. “And when you’re competing for talent, that company is going to win.”