The difficulty of finding the right talent fueled the growth of the startup Talently. Entrepreneurs Doménica Obando, Roxana Kern and Cristian Vega founded it in 2019, but it was not until after the pandemic that their business grew 50% and today it not only maintains a monthly increase of 30%, but also celebrates its first round of investment. seed for 3 million dollars.
The seed round was led by 500 Startups Latam, Alaya Capital, Salkantay Ventures, Newtype Ventures, Poder Ventures, Latin Leap and the funds that previously trusted companies such as Automattic (WordPress), Cornershop, Clara and Startupeable.
With this capital, the educational technology firm seeks to consolidate its presence in Latin countries such as Mexico – its main market – Peru, Colombia and Argentina and start operations in the United States. Additionally, it plans to launch an ‘intelligent match’ platform between developers and employers.
“Latin America has great potential to become the center of developers thanks to the low barriers in education, training and profitability. This is attractive to hiring companies. Talently is in an ideal position to become the source of connection between supply and demand in the market”, said Stefan Krautwald, general partner of Latin Leap.
The value proposition
Talently is an employability marketplace that connects tech talent with international companies. It has an intensive training platform for software developers in tools that allow them to access positions in leading technology companies such as Pinterest, Nubank, Mercado Libre, Paypal, among others.
The training areas include personal branding , handling job interviews, technical English and strengthening of technological skills, through a solution that combines access to unlimited content with personalized advice, according to the needs of each profile.
The promise of edtech is to make the recruitment process more efficient, reducing the cost by up to 50% compared to traditional recruiters, as well as saving time, with a value proposition of less than 10 days of hiring.
Doménica Obando, CEO of Talently, is convinced that Latin America has the opportunity to become a technology powerhouse like India did 30 years ago. To achieve this, he says, we have two main allies: Latin talent, which has great technical skills, but is not prepared to access international opportunities, and startups that are the engine of growth and development for the region.
In its study ‘IT Talent: STEM Competitiveness in Latin America’, the recruitment company PageGroup, reports that the large technology builders are recruiting a lot of talent in Latin America, it is even estimated that in the next three years they will be in demand in the region by least 3.5 million professionals in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
However, 48% of companies in Latin America are experiencing a shortage of talent, especially when requiring profiles with digital or highly specialized skills.
“The tech talent shortage is global and growing every day. Latin America produces some of the best developers in the world.[…]. At Newtype we are excited to support Talently in its mission to develop and provide the Latin American tech talent that makes the world’s software,” said Milena Bursztyn, investor at Newtype Ventures.
The educational platform has more than 3,500 students and more than 100 employers seeking to grow and scale their technological reach with the help of Latino profiles.
