Like for many startups out there, 2020 was a challenging year for Glints.
Fortunately, thanks to some market tailwinds for our products and the hard work of the Glints team, by year-end, we managed to scale up to having over 4 million professionals visit Glints’ platform every month in pursuit of career development, and have served the talent needs of over 35,000 employers across the region to-date.
We also see growth in our annual revenue by more than 100%, continuing the trend of annual revenues growing at triple-digit percentages annually for the past 3 years.
We are now also happy to announce the close of US$22.5 Million in an oversubscribed round led by Tokyo-listed PERSOL Holdings, marking the largest investment round into a career platform in Southeast Asia.
The funding round is joined by returning investors Monk’s Hill Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, Fresco Capital, Mindworks Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, and other top investors including Binny Bansal (co-founder of Flipkart) and Xiaoyin Zhang (Ex Goldman Sachs TMT China Head & Partner who brought Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba public).
Beginners’ Mindset – Less than 1% done
Despite growing more than 100% in the past year, we are still less than 1% done.
We are huge fans of the term “Beginners’ Mindset” at Glints (it is one of our cultural values), and believe that we are just at the beginning of a long growth journey.
There are more than 120 million professionals in Southeast Asia, with millions more entering the workforce every year. As the largest talent platform for career development and recruitment in Southeast Asia, Glints is here to empower the 120 million and growing professionals in the region and to solve the regional talent crunch.
The next 10x & the way forward: Building a full-stack talent ecosystem to accelerate the future of work and talent in SEA
With the pandemic accelerating the future of work and causing big changes in the labour market, our mission to empower the 120 million professionals in Southeast Asia is more important than ever. Existing solutions like transactional job portals and traditional recruiters only provide part of the solution. We are scaling Glints to support Southeast Asian professionals in their career discovery and development and to solve the regional talent crunch for employers.
We have evolved from “shallow” job matching into a “deep” full-stack talent platform with vertical integration of community, skills education, and job features that support professionals looking to grow in their careers. Over the past 18 months, we have launched:
- Glints Community (a localised career forum with over 50,000 posts so far, that helps professionals to ask any questions about their career)
- Glints Academy (an online coding boot camp with over 400 graduates so far, that allows young professionals to get digital skills training for a job)
- Glints ExpertClass (online professional courses with over 2,000 monthly active learners that help professionals to level up their skill sets)
These different features integrate with the core Glints job marketplace that has over 4 million professionals visiting monthly to create a full talent ecosystem that empowers users to not only find a job but to grow in their careers.
For employers, Glints provides a tech-enabled recruitment solution, TalentHunt, that is 2x more efficient than traditional recruiters. We have also seen a surge in demand for our cross-border talent solution, TalentHub, with the rapid adoption of remote work. Clients today include Go-Jek, Tokopedia, FWD Insurance, Starbucks, and Mediacorp.
Big thanks to our Customers, Users, Glintstars & Investors
2020 was a difficult year but we have been very lucky. We are grateful to our customers and users for your support, to the 400+ Glintstars for your dedication, and to our investors and advisors for your trust.
The small successes we have achieved so far is credited to our team of driven, smart, mission-oriented, no-ego and first-principles-driven Glintstars. We are very fortunate to have team members who are committed to our mission, and who take pride in setting high standards on this journey with us.
For anyone interested in joining our mission to help all people and organisations realize human potential, please check out our culture deck here and drop us a line.
Thank you,
Oswald, Ying Cong, Yong Jie, Steve
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You can find out more about the investment and our investors in the press release.