HiringBazaar AI
Rejection is the most certain outcome of hiring.
We built the product around it.
Maya is an AI interviewer that shows every candidate exactly what and why — and a rejection-to-roadmap engine that pays the hiring company back.
Somya Sehgal, CEO & Co-founder · IIT Roorkee · Incubated at TIDES · Backed by MeitY Startup Hub
The problem
02For almost everyone, hiring ends in a dead-end rejection
Candidates
Days of prep, one-line rejection
Companies
Paying to evaluate people they won't hire
Learning partners
Billions on ads that can't find serious learners
Nobody is more motivated to learn than someone who just got rejected and finally knows why.
Every rejection is a lead. Nobody is capturing it.
The product
04Maya interviews like a real recruiter, then names the exact gap
Built for the role a student is going for — not a chatbot built to please you.
Role-specific mock interviews
Technical and HR rounds designed for Indian students by top mentors, graded as a compulsory part of the college's placement course.
Feedback that names the gap
What went wrong, where you're weak and what to fix first — built with industry experts, not generic tips.
Benchmarked against who got selected
How you compare with batchmates who performed well for the same role.
Maya · Interview report
IllustrativeSelected batchmates average: 74
Biggest gap: DSA fundamentals. Roadmap: arrays and hashing this week, two timed mocks, then retake.
Watch the demo
05See Maya in action
Workflow
06Every rejection becomes a roadmap, and the hiring spend comes back
Company shortlists
Shortlisted candidates take their interview on Maya to prepare better.
Maya interviews
A real, role-specific interview at the company's bar.
Rejected? Report + roadmap
Free: here's the gap, here's what to learn. No more silence.
Courses for the gap
We match courses to the gap; commission on showing and on every purchase.
Company gets paid back
Commission split with the hiring company. Net hiring cost: zero.
Candidate
Walks away with a plan instead of silence.
Company
Hiring spend paid back by the people it didn't hire.
Learning partners
A motivated lead at the exact moment they want to fix the gap.
Traction
07Live, paid for, and graded into a placement course
$10K+
revenue to date — $40 in Apr ’26 to $10K in Oct ’26
1,700+
students using the platform
2,000+
mock interviews by 700+ Osmania students
90%
engagement among end users
Osmania University
Bonding Education
TIDES IIT Roorkee · MeitY Startup Hub
Business model
08Three revenue streams, built around the rejected candidate
Live today
Colleges pay per student
Next: company side
Candidates pay for more
The big one
Course companies pay for the lead
Market
09Three pools of money, all of it currently spent badly
45,000+
colleges in India, almost every one with a placement cell and a training budget.
~55%
of Indian graduates are rated employable. The rest are the rejected candidates nobody serves.
$20B/yr
spent by course companies and foreign universities on marketing and sales to find people who want to upskill.
01 · Enter
Placement cells — paid for and live today.
02 · Expand
Companies send Maya to every shortlist.
03 · Monetise
Course commissions, split with the hiring company.
Sources: AISHE 2021-22, Ministry of Education · India Skills Report 2025 (Wheebox, CII) · $20B/yr is a company estimate
Competitors
10How a student actually prepares today, and where Maya differs
| Free AI (ChatGPT, Gemini) | Human mock interviewer | Internshala | HiringBazaar (Maya) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | ₹400–1,000 per session | ₹999, unlimited | ₹90–100 per AI interview |
| Built to | Please you, not assess you | Assess you | Prep for internships averaging ₹8K/month | Grill you, exactly like the real round at a fraction of the cost |
| Context on you | None: no college, no placement season, no context | Spends a lot of time learning you, forgets you by next time | Generic templates | Analyses you first; built for the Indian job market by top mentors |
| Reasoning | Limited; free-tier token caps | Deep, but expensive | Very limited | Orchestrates frontier models + harness built by industry experts |
| Competitive | No | Only in a large paid cohort | No | Yes: ranked against selected batchmates |
| Technical round | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Earns for the college | No | No | No | Yes: course commission shared back |
Next six months
11Osmania goes 700 → 5,000; the company side goes live
Everything live today came from colleges and institutes. The next six months add the company side.
| Account | Who | Status | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Osmania University | Large public university, Hyderabad | Live, paying | 700+ → 5,000 students |
| Bonding Education | Coaching institute, 1,000+ students | Live, paying (largest) | Whole curriculum on HB |
| Remarkable Education | Career-guidance firm, came inbound | API requested | ~1 lakh students |
| Poornima University | University, Jaipur | In discussion | 20,000 students |
| IIT Roorkee | Our own campus placement cell | In discussion | — |
| Company-side flow | Shortlist → Maya → rejection report | Lining up first companies | First pilots |
Team
12Founders who live the problem, engineers who built Maya in-house
Incubated at TIDES, IIT Roorkee · $10,000 MeitY Startup Hub grant
Thank you
Let's make rejection the most useful outcome in hiring.
Maya is live, paid for and graded into a university placement course. The company side is next. We'd love to build it with you.
Contact
Somya Sehgal
CEO & Co-founder, HiringBazaar