Kula launches AI-driven recruitment platform for global market expansion

Today, Kula unveiled what it describes as the world's first complete hiring platform offering advanced AI functionalities. Developed during the AI boom, the platform incorporates a variety of AI advancements specifically designed for recruiting purposes. Kula's founder, a former recruitment leader at Uber and Stripe, refers to it as a product built by recruiters for recruiters.

According to the company, this new platform presents a comprehensive solution to typical hiring processes, integrating features for sourcing, applicant tracking (ATS), screening, and analytics. At least 62 percent of recruiters surveyed this year expressed positive sentiments about AI's role in transforming recruitment, and Kula's new platform aims to leverage this optimism effectively.

The recruitment field has long faced challenges due to outdated tools developed in the early 2010s. Many of these tools are described as overly complex and not optimised for user experience, requiring extensive add-ons to provide missing functionalities. Kula seeks to resolve these issues by offering an all-in-one solution that addresses various recruiter pain points, from outreach to analytics.

Originally founded in 2021 to simplify the process of sourcing applicants, Kula quickly gained traction among several companies, including Temporal, Gifthead, and HighRadius. The new platform's launch extends beyond sourcing to include aspects such as candidate screening, scheduling, and capturing interview feedback with an AI-powered analytics dashboard.

Central to Kula's offering is a robust Sourcing and CRM system, which features a versatile career site builder, extensive job board distribution across over 100 channels, and sophisticated outbound messaging capabilities. A Chrome extension further enhances recruiter capabilities by enabling effortless sourcing, unlimited email enrichment with industry-leading match rates, and automated candidate outreach on platforms like LinkedIn and GitHub. It is highlighted as the only platform allowing automated InMail sending directly from the interface.

The newly introduced ATS component utilises AI for intelligent candidate screening and scoring, alongside offering comprehensive application review tools, interview planning, and scheduling assistance. Recruiters can build native or embedded career portals and job pages without needing coding skills or input from marketing and development teams, ensuring these features can be launched quickly.

An advanced analytics module rounds out the platform, providing conversational analytics and comprehensive real-time dashboarding. Traditional recruiting processes often face hurdles with siloed data and dependence on analytics teams to generate insights. Kula's integrated approach aims to eliminate these issues, allowing recruiters to access critical data and insights instantly.

Kula's CEO and co-founder, Achuthanand Ravi, emphasised the platform's goal to personalise and automate the hiring process further. "We have our sights set on personalising and automating the hiring process by deepening AI integration and expanding AI to solve use-cases around candidate search, rediscovery, assessments, scheduling, and forecasting. We at Kula strongly believe that AI can be leveraged to expand talent discovery beyond the limits of what recruiters are able to do currently," Ravi stated.

Ravi's background includes roles as the founding recruiter at Freshworks, then at Uber, and most recently, as leadership recruiter at Stripe. Together with engineering experts Sathappan M and Suman Kumar Dey, Ravi co-founded Kula in 2021. The inspiration for the platform stemmed from the recognition that advanced tech solutions were predominantly available to marketing and sales teams, seldom extending to recruiters.

Piruze Sabuncu, a partner at Square Peg, noted, "Under Achuthanand's leadership, Kula is poised to disrupt a market that's been eagerly awaiting a next generation platform. Recruiting teams are looking for bundled tools built with efficiencies enabled by AI, and designed intuitively by people who understand how they use products."

Kula also plans to expand its market presence beyond its current focus areas in North America and the Asia-Pacific region. "We plan on expanding to other geographies, including Europe, and build region-specific product capabilities and support for compliance," added Ravi.