Hiring thousands of frontline workers (employees who directly provide goods and services to communities) across multiple cities is a coordination-heavy cumbersome task for HR managers. Recruiters have to call prospective employees, follow up on applications, schedule interviews and keep workers informed through onboarding and training.
When hiring volumes spike during festive seasons or business expansion, these tasks can quickly become more difficult to solve manually. Bengaluru-based conversational AI startup Hunar.AI is building AI agents to automate these HR workflows.
The startup today announced the raise of ₹40 Cr ($4.2 Mn) in its Series A funding round led by Blume Ventures. Other investors like Hyderabad Angels Fund, Together Fund, Seedstars, AVNM Ventures, PhysicsWallah cofounders Prateek Maheshwari and Alakh Pandey, and MediaMint cofounder Aditya Vuchi also participated in the round.
Founded in 2022 by Krishna Khandelwal and Shantanu Bhattacharyya, Hunar.AI automates frontline workforce management via its conversational AI agents. These agents help ease various frontline workforce management issues — including hiring, onboarding, training and retention.
It is targeting businesses that need to recruit and manage large numbers of workers, often across several locations and regional languages.
The startup offers voice AI capabilities in more than 20 languages, including Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. This allows enterprises to communicate with workers in their preferred languages while automating workflows that would otherwise require repeated calls and manual follow-ups.
The startup intends to use the fresh capital to strengthen its AI infrastructure, develop its products and bolster its go-to-market strategy.
“Frontline workforce management is one of the largest yet most underserved opportunities in enterprise AI. Solving it requires more than applying general-purpose models to existing processes. It demands a deep understanding of industry workflows, multilingual capabilities and technology that can reliably execute tasks at scale,” said cofounder and CEO Krishna Khandelwal.
The startup claims its AI agents handled more than 1.5 Cr conversations till September 2026, with volumes doubling quarter-on-quarter. Its customers include Swiggy, Zepto, Aditya Birla Capital, Bajaj Finserv, Croma, Dr Lal PathLabs, 1mg and Starbucks.
AI Targets India’s Growing Frontline Workforce
The startup is targeting a workforce segment that spans quick commerce, ecommerce, logistics, mobility, retail and financial services. These businesses often need to recruit workers quickly across multiple cities, while keeping communication and onboarding processes running at scale.
The market size is also expanding. According to NITI Aayog projections, India’s gig workforce is expected to grow from approximately 1 Cr workers in FY25 to 2.35 Cr by 2029-30.
While more workforce helps in finding the right candidates, keeping applicants engaged, coordinating onboarding and ensuring workers receive the necessary information requires manual effort. This is more relevant when recruitment is spread across regions with different languages.
The startup’s approach is to automate these interactions through conversational agents designed around specific enterprise workflows, rather than offer a general-purpose chatbot. Its ability to handle regional languages and integrate into existing workforce processes will be central to how effectively it can serve large employers.
The latest funding will help the startup build out that technology and expand its reach among enterprises.
The post Hunar Raises ₹40 Cr To Scale Agentic AI For Frontline Hiring appeared first on Inc42 Media.