Glints Raises $22.5 Mn From PERSOL Holdings The new funding will support Glints' overall mission to empower the career development of 120 million professionals in Southeast Asia by building out the Glints' Talent Ecosystem

Singapore-based talent platform for career development and recruitment Glints on Tuesday announced to have raised $22.5 million in an oversubscribed round led by Tokyo-listed PERSOL Holdings. This marks the largest investment round into a career platform in Southeast Asia to date.

The Series C round includes participation from existing investors including Monk's Hill Ventures, Fresco Capital, Mindworks Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, and other investors including Binny Bansal and Xiaoyin Zhang.

The new funding will support Glints' overall mission to empower the career development of 120 million professionals in Southeast Asia and to solve the regional talent crunch, with the team building out more features and solutions on the Glints' Talent Ecosystem, deepening the company's footprint in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Taiwan, and scaling its product and engineering teams.

"With the pandemic accelerating the future of work and causing big changes in the labor market, our mission to empower the 120 million professionals in Southeast Asia is more important than ever. Existing solutions are transactional job portals and traditional recruiters that only provide part of the solution. We are scaling Glints as a full-stack talent platform to support the professionals in Southeast Asia with their career discovery and development and to solve the regional talent crunch for employers," said Oswald Yeo, co-founder, and chief executive officer, Glints.

Glints' Talent Ecosystem is accelerating the future of work and talent in SEA. The first-of-its-kind full-stack talent platform supports professionals in their entire career discovery and development, combining community (Glints Community), skills education (Glints Academy and Glints ExpertClass), and job features (Glints Job Marketplace).

"I am excited that we are strengthening our partnership with Glints. With PERSOL Group's commercial distribution and experience in Asia and Glints' leading tech-enabled talent platform, we will empower professionals in Southeast Asia and help solve the talent crunch in Southeast Asia," remarked Takayuki Yamazaki, chief executive officer, PERSOL Group Asia Pacific.

For employers, Glints provides a tech-enabled recruitment solution that is twofold more efficient than traditional recruiters. Clients today include Go-Jek, Tokopedia, FWD Insurance, Starbucks, and Mediacorp. Glints' Talent Hub business or cross-border talent solution has also seen a surge in demand for its cross-border talent solution called TalentHub with the rapid adoption of remote work. The business doubled in 2020.

"Oswald and his team have fundamentally re-imagined a job seeker and employer's journey in the context of the future of work. The speed at which they've achieved sustainable revenues with solid business fundamentals and the scale at which they have built a substantial talent and employer base is astounding," added Peng T. Ong, managing partner, Monk's Hill Ventures.

Despite COVID-19, Glints has been said to have seen resilient growth in 2020 with annual revenues more than doubling continuing the trend of annual revenues growing at triple-digit percentages annually for the past three years.

The company has also seen positive contribution margins across all business units, with Indonesia and Vietnam markets already profitable.

Glints' clients on average make successful hires much faster in 28 days compared to industry standards of 40-50 days and at recruitment costs 40-100 per cent cheaper with Glints than with traditional recruiters.