Pune-based sales hiring startup Scooter has raised ₹15 million, approximately US$180,000, in a Pre-Seed funding round led by AJVC, the early-stage investment fund founded by Aviral Bhatnagar. The company intends to deploy the fresh capital to strengthen its product, expand engineering bandwidth, and simplify the sales recruitment process for both candidates and hiring managers. The investment is also notable as AJVC's first commitment to a Pune-headquartered startup, reflecting an expansion of institutional Pre-Seed capital beyond larger Indian startup hubs.
Scenario-Led Hiring Model
Founded in 2024 by Kartik Mandrekar and Saumya Seth, Scooter helps startups recruit sales professionals by evaluating candidates on practical selling scenarios rather than relying primarily on CV-based screening. The platform sources verified sales talent and assesses individuals through real-world exercises such as drafting outbound messages, conducting discovery calls, and responding to price objections. This approach gives hiring managers a clearer view of how candidates would perform in actual revenue-generating roles before any resume is reviewed.
Founder Backgrounds
Kartik Mandrekar previously led sales teams at Gartner, Shoptimize, and Graas, bringing deep enterprise go-to-market experience to the company. Saumya Seth is a behavioral scientist who holds a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and focuses on evaluation design and behavioral decision-making. Together, their combined expertise informs Scooter's proprietary assessment rubric, which is designed to measure genuine commercial competence instead of memorized interview responses.
Platform Workflow and Candidate Experience
After sourcing verified sales professionals, Scooter delivers a curated shortlist of three to five candidates whose scenario performance aligns with a hiring company's specific sales motion, whether inbound, outbound, enterprise, or transactional. Hiring managers can review short video clips from assessments and performance scores before opening a candidate's CV, which helps reduce unconscious pedigree bias. The platform's workflow is intended to replace inefficient resume parsing and manual screening with a faster, evidence-based evaluation process.
Traction and Customer Results
Scooter currently works with more than 50 companies and has added 14 new customer accounts in recent months. The startup has built an active pool of more than 10,000 verified sales professionals across key go-to-market roles. This traction has translated into accelerated hiring outcomes, with one customer completing a sales hire through Scooter in as few as six days, compared with industry averages that often stretch from 30 to 45 days.
Funding Allocation and Market Context
The fresh capital will be directed toward product development, platform automation, and the expansion of candidate workflows. Scooter is positioning its assessment-led approach as a more efficient alternative to broad job boards and expensive recruitment agencies, which often struggle with quality filtering for specialized sales roles. By reducing screening bottlenecks and lowering placement costs, the company aims to help startups and mid-market enterprises hire revenue talent more predictably.
AJVC's Investment Thesis
AJVC operates as a founder-first Pre-Seed fund that backs high-conviction teams at the earliest stages of company formation. The fund, led by Aviral Bhatnagar, typically commits standard early-stage checks and provides founders with operational guidance and hiring support. Its investment in Scooter reflects confidence in the startup's scenario-first hiring model and broadens the fund's geographic coverage into Pune, moving beyond established hubs such as Bengaluru, Mumbai, and the National Capital Region.
Scooter's Pre-Seed round illustrates how vertical hrtech platforms are addressing specific hiring inefficiencies by prioritizing practical skills over traditional resume screening. The startup's early traction, large candidate network, and fast hiring outcomes suggest that assessment-led recruitment can deliver measurable value to sales organizations. With new backing from AJVC, Scooter is now positioned to automate its evaluation process, expand its client base, and scale its hiring solution across India's evolving startup ecosystem.