Pune-based recruitment technology startup Scooter has raised ₹1.5 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Aviral Bhatnagar’s pre-seed investment fund, AJVC. The company plans to deploy the fresh capital to accelerate product development, expand engineering bandwidth, and streamline the evaluation workflow for sales job seekers and hiring managers across high-growth startups and mid-market enterprises.
Key takeaways
- Capital injection: Scooter has secured ₹1.5 crore in a pre-seed round anchored by AJVC, marking the institutional fund’s first bet on a Pune-headquartered startup.
- Scenario-led evaluation: Founded in 2024 by enterprise sales leader Kartik Mandrekar and behavioral scientist Saumya Seth, Scooter replaces traditional resume filtering with practical, scenario-based simulations and recorded evaluation pitches.
- Curated candidate shortlists: The platform screens applicants and delivers a tight shortlist of three to five pre-vetted candidates to hiring managers, allowing them to review short video assessment clips before reading CVs.
- Platform traction: Scooter has built an active pool of more than 10,000 sales professionals, working with over 50 enterprise and startup clients after adding 14 new customer logos in recent months.
- Accelerated hiring cycle: By assessing practical execution upfront, the platform has cut sales recruitment turnaround times, with select enterprise clients closing verified sales hires in as few as six days.
Moving beyond CVs: How Scooter works
Recruiting high-performing sales talent remains a persistent operational pain point for Indian startups and established corporations. Conventional recruitment practices rely on keyword parsing in resumes, static pedigree metrics, and transactional agency headhunters. However, strong resumes often fail to predict actual quota achievement, cold outbound acumen, or consultative deal-closing ability.
Scooter approaches recruitment by shifting evaluation from passive historical credentials to active execution. The platform sources and screens candidates across key go-to-market roles, including Sales Development Representatives (SDRs), Account Executives (AEs), and Go-To-Market (GTM) engineers.
Instead of submitting a standard resume and waiting for an initial screening call, applicants are tested through standardized real-world selling scenarios:
- Practical scenario simulation: Candidates navigate real sales challenges, such as drafting customized outbound prospect messaging, conducting structured discovery calls, handling price objections, or delivering targeted value propositions.
- Recorded video & artifact reviews: The platform captures recorded candidate pitches and written outputs, creating verified evaluation portfolios.
- Curated shortlists: Hiring managers receive a tailored batch of three to five candidates whose demonstrated scenario performance aligns with the hiring company’s specific sales motion (inbound, outbound, enterprise, or transactional).
Hiring managers can review short video snippets and performance scores before reviewing the candidate’s written resume, minimizing unconscious pedigree bias and accelerating hiring decisions.
THE SCOOTER SCENARIO-FIRST RECRUITMENT PIPELINE:
[ Active Candidate Pool (10,000+ Sales Professionals) ]
│
▼
[ Real-World Sales Simulation / Assessment ]
(Cold Outbound, Objection Handling, Discovery Pitch)
│
▼
[ Multi-Dimensional Scoring & Video Snippet Capture ]
│
▼
[ Tailored Shortlist Delivered: 3 to 5 Verified Candidates ]
│
▼
[ Fast-Track Final Rounds & Closure (In as few as 6 Days) ]
Founder profiles and sector background
Scooter was co-founded in 2024 by Kartik Mandrekar and Saumya Seth, combining operational enterprise go-to-market expertise with behavioral assessment methodologies:
- Kartik Mandrekar (Co-Founder): Brings years of practical enterprise sales management experience, having previously led business development and commercial sales organizations at global research firm Gartner, e-commerce enabler Shoptimize, and omnichannel commerce platform Graas.
- Saumya Seth (Co-Founder): A behavioral scientist who holds a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on behavioral decision-making, evaluation design, and psychometric assessment frameworks.
The combination of enterprise sales experience and behavioral evaluation forms the basis of Scooter’s proprietary testing rubric, ensuring simulations measure genuine commercial competence rather than memorized interview responses.
AJVC’s investment thesis and pre-seed momentum
The funding round was led entirely by AJVC, the dedicated pre-seed venture capital vehicle established by early-stage investor and ecosystem commentator Aviral Bhatnagar (widely recognized as the author of A Junior VC).
AJVC operates a founder-first pre-seed funding model aimed at backing high-conviction teams at the earliest stages of company formation. The fund typically commits standard ₹1.5 crore checks to portfolio companies, providing technical credits, operational guidance, and hiring support.
The investment in Scooter represents AJVC’s first deployment into a Pune-based startup, underscoring the expansion of institutional early-stage capital outside Bengaluru, Mumbai, and the National Capital Region (NCR).
| Deal Parameter | Details |
| Startup Name | Scooter (thescooter.ai) |
| Legal / Operating Location | Pune, Maharashtra, India |
| Founded Year | 2024 |
| Founders | Kartik Mandrekar & Saumya Seth |
| Round / Amount | Pre-Seed / ₹1.5 Crore ($180,000) |
| Lead Investor | AJVC (Led by Aviral Bhatnagar) |
| Client Base | 50+ companies (14 added recently) |
| Candidate Network | 10,000+ verified sales professionals |
| Primary Use of Funds | Product development, platform automation, expanding candidate workflows |
Industry context: The shifting Indian HR-tech landscape
Scooter’s fundraise highlights a broader transition underway within Indian human resources technology (HR-tech) and recruitment marketplaces.
While horizontal job aggregators (such as LinkedIn, Naukri, and Indeed) manage high applicant volumes, they often struggle with quality filtering for specialized, revenue-generating functions. A typical entry-to-mid-level tech sales job posting on horizontal job boards routinely attracts hundreds of unvetted resumes within 48 hours, creating manual screening bottlenecks for early-stage founders and talent acquisition leads.
At the same time, traditional recruitment headhunters charge contingency placement fees ranging from 8.33% to 15% of annual cost-to-company (CTC), with inconsistent delivery speeds and high candidate drop-off rates during probation.
By building a specialized vertical platform for revenue talent, Scooter positions itself in the high-intent space between broad job boards and expensive recruitment agencies:
- Cost efficiency: Delivering pre-vetted candidates via a software-enabled platform significantly lowers placement costs compared to executive search firms.
- Speed to hire: Client metrics show hiring cycles contracting down to six days for specific roles, compared to an industry average of 30 to 45 days for enterprise sales positions.
- Retention predictability: Candidates who pass practical sales scenario assessments tend to onboard faster and reach quota productivity earlier, reducing early-stage sales rep churn.
What could happen next
- Platform automation: The company will use the capital to automate scenario grading, leveraging multimodal AI to evaluate candidate voice modulation, pitch pacing, and conversational structure.
- Go-to-market expansion: Having built an initial footprint of 50+ clients, Scooter will seek to expand customer acquisition across enterprise B2B SaaS, fintech, logistics, and consumer tech startups expanding their outbound sales teams.
- Geographic expansion: While headquartered in Pune, Scooter plans to scale candidate acquisition and recruiter partnerships across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Gurugram, and international remote-hiring corridors.
Frequently asked questions
What does the startup Scooter do?
Scooter is a Pune-based recruitment technology startup that specializes in sales hiring. Instead of relying solely on resumes, the platform assesses sales professionals using real-world selling scenarios and recorded video pitches, delivering a curated shortlist of pre-vetted candidates to hiring managers.
How much funding did Scooter raise and who led the round?
Scooter raised ₹1.5 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by AJVC, an early-stage venture capital fund founded by Aviral Bhatnagar.
Who are the founders of Scooter?
The company was founded in 2024 by Kartik Mandrekar, a former sales leader at Gartner, Shoptimize, and Graas, and Saumya Seth, a behavioral scientist holding a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
How many companies use Scooter for hiring?
Scooter currently works with more than 50 companies, having added 14 new customer accounts in recent months, and maintains an active candidate network of over 10,000 sales professionals.
Get the day’s top stories in your inbox
One concise email. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
