Singapore-based skills verification startup Indorse has raised funding of $6.5 million from Brand Capital, the ad-for-equity investment arm of The Times Group. This includes an initial investment of $2 million as a convertible note, with a valuation of $15 million, with the option of a further tranche of $4.5 million, the startup said in a statement.





Indorse was co-founded by Gaurang Torvekar, Avadhoot Kulkarni, David Moskowitz, and Dipesh Sukhani in 2017 in Singapore. The company uses blockchain-powered platform to assess and verify skills, expertise, and achievements of candidates searching for new job roles, with an initial focus on the coding segment.





The Indorse platform helps businesses evolve from sorting through hundreds of applicants to making informed hires within days, using a shortlist of candidates proven to have the right skills for the role, claims the company in a statement.





ALSO READ Blockchain adoption will increase rapidly in 2019





The startup said it will use the fresh capital to expand and build its business in India. Gaurang Torvekar, CEO and Co-Founder of Indorse, said this transaction will help Indorse to build brand and become a major dependable source for employers seeking candidates with the right skills in India and South-East Asia coding skills market.





“By leveraging the experience of human experts across the world, Indorse provides companies with reliable and actionable insights about candidates. We are raising the bar in terms of quality appraisal of tech talent, while substantially reducing the direct and indirect costs of the hiring process. Candidates can benefit from ‘indorsement’ by proving they can do the job they’re applying for — regardless of their CV’s content," Gaurang said.





Indorse has already worked with both small and large tech companies in finding suitable talent. Most recently, it conducted a tech recruitment event to assess coding and data science candidates for South-East Asia’s biggest ride-hailing firm, Grab. Within six months, Indorse claims to have assessed over 2,000 tech candidates and 7,000 code reviews.





This round of funding is the most recent in a series of investments in the company since inception. In 2017, Indorse completed a fundraising round, which reached $9 million, allowing the team to focus on building a working product. Prior to that, UK's investment and advisory firm, Coinsilium Group, made seed investment of $450,000 (Singapore dollars) for a 10 percent equity stake in the business.