Business

HR Tech Startup Sense valued at $500 Million in SoftBank Vision Fund 2-Led Funding

HR Tech Startup Sense valued at $500 Million in SoftBank Vision Fund 2-Led Funding

A person familiar with the situation informed that Sense, an HR tech business that helps some of the world’s leading staffing and recruiting agencies locate and employ talent on time, has raised $500 million in a fresh funding round. The San Francisco-based business has secured $50 million in its Series D funding round, according to the company. 

SoftBank Vision Fund 2, bringing the total raised by the five-and-a-half-year-old firm to $90 million, spearheaded the funding round. According to, the value increase comes only six months after Sense closed its Series C financing. Sense caters to blue-collar employees and assists companies in managing their talent’s whole lifetime.

In an interview with, Anil Dharni, co-founder and chief executive of Sense, noted that while hiring knowledge workers might take up to six months, “in this environment when you’re employing a warehouse packager, employers need him or her to start now.” He refused to remark on the price tag. According to him, the great majority of professional social networks and other recruitment platforms are now geared toward knowledge professionals. “However, such networks are irrelevant for folks like Uber drivers and Amazon warehouse employees,” he explained the problem.

According to him, the business has courted over 600 customers that utilize the Sense platform to grow their recruiting, including Amazon, Sears, Vaco, and Kenny. According to Sense’s own data, its clients notice a 263 percent increase in the number of candidates they can screen using the platform, as well as an 81 percent reduction in the time it takes to fill vacancies.

“Our recent financing not only validates the need for individualized talent engagement in today’s candidate-centric environment, but it also serves as a worldwide accelerator for our platform as we help transform the future of work,” he added. Sense provides a variety of services, including chatbots, to assist organizations eliminate prejudices in their recruiting procedures, according to Dharni. The startup’s platform has also used to employ healthcare staff in the last year and a half, he added.

Dharni, who previously co-founded gaming startup Funzio, which was bought by GREE for $210 million, got the concept for Sense after having difficulty acquiring talent at his prior enterprises, according to Dharni.

“We recognized that a company’s talent makes or ruins it.” Your business will fail if you are unable to recruit suitable personnel. “It makes no difference what your TAM [total addressable market] or business strategy is,” he explained. “It was with that insight that I determined that the next business we’ll build would be focused on solutions for the talent sector,” he explained.

According to Dharni, Sense is pursuing a $200 billion market that is mainly unexplored. In the last year, Sense has more than quadrupled its income and personnel numbers. According to him, the business now wants to extend Sense’s products in a number of areas, including Western Europe. “We think the Sense platform’s importance in helping business clients to locate and recruit great personnel more quickly has been shown. We have no doubt in their potential to positively impact how firms develop excellent teams and compete as it expands both domestically and worldwide,” said Sumer Juneja, Managing Partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement.