Sequoia India backs Prismforce that helps IT companies build better talent supply chain

Prismforce, an India-U.S. startup that provides IT and tech services companies with tools to build better talent supply chain, has raised $13.6 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital India.

IT providers spend a large part of their variable costs on hiring skilled employees. But finding those employees from the ever-growing talent market and deploying them effectively to get adequate results is one of the most significant pain points for the industry worldwide.

Prismforce is taking Amazon’s approach to matching the demand for talent with the supply for companies offering IT and tech services, said co-founder and CEO Somnath Chatterjee.

“We are treating this as a supply chain problem, where you have to standardize demand, standardize supply, make the match happen, almost as if you are an e-commerce engine and e-commerce marketplace trying to make a talent marketplace,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch.

After spending 14 years as a partner at McKinsey, Chatterjee founded Prismforce with Mohd Qasim in April 2021. Qasim also worked as a senior engagement manager at McKinsey.

While working at the management consulting firm, both co-founders served several IT providers, which helped them identify the problem that Prismforce aims to solve.

Prismforce’s product catalog includes SkillPrism, which uses AI over a skill inventory management application to automate talent profiling. The startup also offers IntelliPrism for an end-to-end resource management module with AI-driven search and match, OutlookPrism to enable workforce planning and resource forecasting and InsightPrism to offer CXO dashboards.

The Delaware-registered startup, which has a wholly-owned India subsidiary and offices in San Francisco, Mumbai and Bengaluru, is currently on track to amass 10 clients by the end of this year, with the smallest client generating $400 million of revenue while the biggest counterpart making more than $10 billion. Chatterjee did not disclose their names but said half of them have their presence in India, while half of them are U.S.-domiciled companies.

The executive said that he expects the geographical ratio of the startup’s clients shift over time, with 70–80% coming from English-speaking countries, such as the U.S., U.K. and Europe.

Although the primary focus of Prismforce is limited to companies offering IT and tech services, it also targets entities in the enterprise IT domain. The startup also plans to reach professional services firms in the future, including accounting, tax and consulting firms, Chatterjee said.

“It is a lot more pertinent for IT companies because the underlying skills are changing very fast, which is not the case for many of these consulting and professional services companies. But that could be the third horizon we can go to,” he noted.

With the fresh funding from Sequoia Capital India and global angel investors, Prismforce plans to scale up its go-to-market reach, enhance its product suite and grow its talent base from the existing team of over 60 members to a 120–140 group in the next nine to 12 months.

“The technology services industry, with a cumulative market cap of over $4 trillion and a global workforce of over 20 million, is a core pillar of the global digital economy. Despite that, there is no large vertical software vendor serving its varied needs,” said Abhishek Mohan, principal at Sequoia Capital India, in a prepared statement.

“Somnath and Qasim’s vision is to create the defining vertical software company for technology and professional services. Over the past year, this vision has been validated by multiple industry-leading IT providers, which have deployed Prismforce products to great impact.”

Prismforce has raised a total of $15.4 million to date, with $1.8 million infused in a seed funding round a year ago from an undisclosed group of angel investors that included serial entrepreneurs and SaaS founders.