Former Swiggy and Zomato executives Anuj Rathi and Prashant Parashar have launched Profound, an AI-native professional networking platform. The startup has raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round backed by Stellaris Venture Partners and 3one4 Capital.
The round also saw participation from several angel investors, including Swiggy Chief Executive Officer Sriharsha Majety, Swiggy co-founder Nandan Reddy, Zomato co-founder Pankaj Chaddah, Razorpay Chief Executive Officer Harshil Mathur, CRED founder Kunal Shah and OfBusiness co-founder Bhuvan Gupta.
Profound is developing personalised AI-powered representatives, called “AI Reps,” to assist professionals with career opportunities, networking, mentoring and personal-brand development. Users can create an AI Rep through a voice conversation of approximately 30 minutes, during which the platform seeks to understand their expertise, professional experience, working style and career ambitions.
The platform’s technology is structured around four layers: understanding, representation, connection and amplification. Its understanding layer combines voice AI, multimodal interfaces and different large and small AI models. The representation layer converts conversations into a structured professional profile, while a proprietary matchmaking engine identifies relevant people, roles and organisations. Its amplification tools are intended to help users create professional content aligned with their identities.
Profound is also developing a business-to-business recruitment offering for startups. The platform will allow companies to search for potential candidates, assess their suitability for roles and identify information that may require further verification during the recruitment process.
Rathi previously held product and business leadership roles at Swiggy, Cleartrip and Jupiter. During his seven-year tenure at Swiggy, he worked on initiatives including Instamart, Swiggy Labs and Genie. Parashar has held technology leadership positions at companies including Zomato, Delhivery, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Ola and Walmart Labs.
The startup has opened early access to its first group of users after conducting more than 1,000 calls during its product-development and user-research phase. It plans to introduce additional features through an early-access programme before a wider rollout.
