Scooter | ₹1.5 Cr / ~$180K (Pre-Seed)

Founders: Kartik Mandrekar, Saumya Seth

Founded: 2024

HQ: Pune

Sector: HR Tech / Sales Hiring

What they do

→ Sales hiring platform that evaluates candidates on real sales scenarios instead of resumes

→ Sources verified sales professionals, runs them through practical assessments, and delivers a shortlist of 3–5 candidates

→ Hiring managers review short video clips from assessments before ever seeing a CV

→ One customer completed a sales hire in just 6 days

The Funding

→ Raised ₹1.5 Cr in a pre-seed round

→ Led entirely by ajvc, Aviral Bhatnagar's pre-seed fund

→ Marks AJVC's first-ever investment in a Pune-based startup

→ Implied post-money valuation of ~₹16.7 Cr, based on AJVC's standard pre-seed structure

Why it matters

→ Already works with 50+ companies, adding 14 new customers in recent months

→ Built a pool of 10,000+ sales candidates

→ Founder Kartik Mandrekar led sales teams at Gartner, Shoptimize, and Graas; co-founder Saumya Seth is a behavioural scientist (UPenn)

→ Bets that skill-based, scenario-driven hiring beats CV screening for one of the hardest roles to vet - sales

Can a sales simulation really predict performance better than a track record on paper?