Psychd Analytics uses predictive people analytics to help them filter candidates that are more likely to perform.
Name of Business: Psychd Analytics Pvt Ltd
Location: Gurgaon, India
Website: recruiting.psychd.co
Product/Service Offering: Predictive Analytics for Recruiting
Founder Interviewed: Mandy Sidana
This article is part of our Business Startup Spotlight series featuring entrepreneurs and their companies. We hope that these founders’ interviews will inspire and motivate you as you undertake your own entrepreneurial journey.
Tell us a little about yourself with a focus on what motivates you.
What drives me essentially is the passion to understand each human being as a complex mix of emotions, drives, desires and personality traits. Very often we have a deep understanding of people we love and spend a lot of time with, but there’s always more to learn.
When did you establish your company and where did the idea originate?
We registered the company in Oct., 2015 but the idea originated much before that. We started by creating a personality based social network where one is matched on the basis of personality and get pointers for people they are related to. The platform is still live and active at social.psychd.co. We soon realized there’s a greater need that we can fill for companies and we developed Psychd Recruiting.
What need or needs does your company seek to fill for its customers?
In the ever competitive and fast paced world, companies need to find people who can perform not by hit and trial, but by sound data analytics. We use predictive people analytics to help them filter candidates that are more likely to perform.
What is the one thing that sets your company apart from its competitors?
Instead of guessing what personality traits or competencies are critical for success in a given job role, our system works that out for the company with a proven validity. Instead of giving a long assessment report that points certain strengths and weaknesses for a candidate, our report just provides a performance index based on factors that it figured are critical.
What was the biggest challenge you faced while getting your company up and running, and how did you overcome it?
Getting the right people and making them leave their jobs for a future payoff is always hard, but we have been fortunate in finding passionate people who were intrigued by the idea and cause. What worked for us was approaching a lot of people while specifically targeting places and groups that have interesting people.
Were there resources you have utilized that other founders might find compelling or useful?
Keeping up with the latest industry trends through hackernews, reddit product-hunt, Slashdot and Designer News is always helpful.
What steps have you taken to secure funding for your company and what, if anything, would you do differently if you had to start over?
Doing your homework on investors definitely helps and I believe one must be selective while approaching investors. Make sure you understand the vision and areas of interest the investor has before approaching them. My investor and I have a shared vision of the future and that helped. If I had to start over, I would be looking for more in depth strategic partnership executions with mentors and investors.
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Have there been any questions you have had as an entrepreneur of a fledgling startup that you had a particularly hard time finding answers to?
Often the insecurity of a company and intangible metrics of progress begs hard questions. What helps is staying focused on actual value creation rather than vague metrics.
What challenges, if any, are you grappling with?
Prioritizing different features/releases vs business development is usually very challenging but rewarding activity. As much as we want to keep adding features to our products, we must validate before building, which is often challenging and time consuming
What is the most helpful tip or “hack” you’ve ever learned, stumbled across or been given?
Reaching out to a large number of people is a constant need and challenge for startups. For Psychd Social platform, making informative videos for youtube helped us achieve that. Most startups have a steep learning curve. One can easily use the learnings to share and attract social following.
Is there anything else you would like to share about your company?
We consider ourselves a technology first company and we want to further the understanding of emotions and people using machine learning.
FundingSage extends a special thanks to Sayantan Dasgupta, Manager, Corporate Communications, Jaarvis Accelerator for his support in facilitating this article.
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Pam Goforth
Pam Goforth is Research Manager for FundingSage, which provides valuable information, tools and resources to entrepreneurs seeking to start, grow and fund a business.
