HR Startup Lands Early Investment

Darrian Mikell is the co-founder and CEO of Qualifi.

An Indianapolis-based startup focusing on streamlining the hiring process for human resources teams has closed on a $600,000 pre-seed investment round. Qualifi says it will use the funding to further develop its platform, grow sales and marketing operations, and add up to 30 jobs over the next few years.

The company says its platform creates a seamless one-way audio interview experience designed to eliminate back-and-forth scheduling and capture better data to help recruiters making hiring decisions. 

Chief Executive Officer Darrian Mikell tells Inside INdiana Business the funding represents the hard work his team has put in since the company’s founding in 2019.

“It provides a little bit of credibility and backing to what we’re trying to accomplish as a team and now, we can actually go and further execute on the goals and move a lot faster to achieve those goals that we set out to do,” said Mikell.

Mikell says human resources teams tend to get overlooked in their organizations and they don’t always have the resources they need to better do their jobs. Qualifi says recruiters who have used the platform have shaved one week off their time-to-hire average.

“We want to be one of those companies that really cares for them and helps them to unlock new opportunities for themselves and make their organizations better,” Mikell said. “So, our first and foremost goal is to help them and then building on our team and creating diverse teams internally and for those customers that we serve.”

The funding round was co-led by Sixty8 Capital and Elevate Ventures in Indianapolis, with participation from Queen City Angels in Cincinnati, Bloomington-based Flywheel Fund, and other angel investors. The funding from Sixty8 Capital is the first from the firm’s new $20 million venture fund, led by Managing Director Kelli Jones and focusing on supporting Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and women-led startups.

“[Jones has] seen Qualifi in its infancy and its building stages…and so I think it’s really an exciting time for both Qualifi and for Sixty8 because of what we’re both aligned around and that is, one, for us a company, we want to stand for diversity,” said Mikell. “Myself and three of my founders are Black and that’s not a common makeup of a co-founding team in our ecosystem and we want to be champions for that and it’s great that we have a partner in that with Sixty8 Capital that’s also trying to build that up in our ecosystem here locally.”

Mikell says the company’s short-term focus for Qualifi is creating more awareness for the company’s platform. Long-term, he hopes the company can help bridge more gaps in the recruiting process for HR teams.