Many companies, particularly startups and MSMEs, struggle with delayed hiring and limited in–house expertise. Interview panels are frequently unavailable, technical evaluations are often inadequate, and it can take more than 40 days to fill a single position.
Enter Bengaluru-based startup founded in 2018 by CEO Anil Agarwal and CFO Ritu Mathran. The name InCruiter is a portmanteau that combines ‘interviewer’ and ‘recruiter’.
After identifying inefficiencies in the interview process, in November 2018, InCruiter launched its first product, Interview as a Service (IaaS), connecting businesses with vetted expert interviewers. By April 2019, the company had signed its first client, a US-based aerospace company, Axis Cades, after meeting its global talent head at an HR tech conference. “He liked what we were building and even became a mentor for us. We’re still in touch,” Agarwal says.
InCruiter now provides both human and AI-powered interview solutions, along with scheduling, coding assessments, and exit interviews, to help businesses hire faster, reduce bias, and improve the quality of talent selection.
Solving big hiring pain points
Whether in India or globally, closing a position can take an average of 42- 45 days. “Why?” asks Agarwal, “Because there are multiple rounds of interviews, hiring managers aren’t always available, and many companies lack the expertise to assess specialised roles.”
InCruiter’s tools are solving these problems by offering human and AI-led interview options, reducing the average hiring time from 42 days to just 7-10 days.
The company’s portfolio includes six products designed to streamline hiring processes. IncServe connects companies with a network of over 3,000 expert interviewers for technical and non-technical roles, while IncBot, its AI-powered one-way video interview tool, generates dynamic follow-up questions to replace human screeners in early rounds.
IncVid offers secure, “cheat-proof” live interviews with code collaboration, AI feedback, and evaluation features, while IncFeed automates scheduling by syncing calendars of candidates and panels. For employee exits, IncExit uses trained psychological and behavioural experts to conduct automated interviews and provide actionable insights, while IncSource gives businesses access to a pool of more than 1,000 pre-vetted developers and professionals for contract hiring needs.
Riding the AI wave
In 2023, as AI adoption accelerated, InCruiter launched its second flagship product, AI Interviews. The system can conduct the first or even second round of interviews, analyse candidate responses, and assess confidence, grammar, and domain knowledge. So far, more than 3,000 interviews have been conducted through the platform.
“Human interviews are not perfect. After conducting over two lakh human-led interviews, I can say mistakes happen. The future is where AI takes the first round,” Agarwal says.
The question is: can AI help reduce biases in recruitment?
Agarwal says a hiring manager might unconsciously prefer someone from their hometown or reject a candidate based on how they speak. “AI focuses only on technical responses, not background or personal attributes.”
With many candidates now using AI to craft resumes packed with industry keywords, Anil says traditional resume screening is becoming less relevant. “90% of candidates can now pass AI resume screeners, but interviews, whether human or AI-led, still reveal true capability.”
InCruiter serves over 500 clients, with around 250 active, including EY, PwC, EXL, Dentsu, and Yes Technologies. Around 30% are enterprise customers, and the company operates in more than seven countries, including markets in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam. It is planning to expand to the UK, Canada, and the US, where InCruiter has already set up a registered company.
“We’ve been using IncBot for a while, and it has completely changed how we hire. It makes screening simple and stress-free, saves time on CV checks, and speeds up the interview process,” says Neha Dubey, Assistant Manager, HR, at Dentsu.
It operates from Bengaluru with a team of 80 employees, including customer success and sales teams.
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Growth and funding plans
InCruiter began as a bootstrapped company, with an initial investment of Rs 20 lakh of the founder’s savings. It was later supported by a Rs 20 lakh Startup India grant and Rs 1 crore in revenue-based financing from Recur Club. The company closed FY25 at $1 million in revenue and expects to hit $2.5 million in FY26.
The pricing works in two main ways. For large enterprises, InCruiter uses a pay-per-interview model; the company conducts the interviews and then sends the bill at the end of the month, based on the total number of interviews completed.
For startups and smaller businesses, InCruiter follows a credit-based model. These clients buy a set number of interview credits in advance. For example, if a startup wants to conduct 500 interviews, it can purchase 500 credits upfront and use them as needed.
The minimum contract value usually starts at around Rs 1.5- 2 lakh, but most deals now average between Rs 4-4.5 lakh, depending on the scale and complexity of the hiring requirements.
Market and the competition
According to a report by Fortune Business Insights, the global HR technology market was worth about $37.66 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach $81.84 billion by 2032. “We’re not even at 1% market capture yet, but the opportunity is huge,” Agarwal says.
The CEO admits that companies like Interview.io, FlowCareer, and BarRaiser compete with InCruiter in certain areas. “No one else offers like InCruiter’s full ecosystem of products,” Agarwal says, “Many enterprises choose us because they can get everything in one place, AI interviews, human interviews, and exit interviews.”
Expanding to other countries is the biggest challenge, as per the CEO. “To set up in the US or other big markets, we need local teams and a lot of funding,” Agarwal says. The company is now in talks to raise $3-5 million in the next six months to help with the expansion.
The company has already onboarded over 50 clients for AI interviews in the past year and is now venturing into agentic AI, where human and AI interviewers can collaborate in real time.
Next month, InCruiter plans to launch AI Recruiter, an AI-powered tool designed to manage the very first stage of hiring. It will speak directly with candidates, either through chat or voice, to gather key information such as salary expectations, preferred job location, notice period, and availability to join.
Edited by Jyoti Narayan
