Rotterdam-based VONQ, a smart recruitment platform, has sold a 54% stake to capital D – a private equity fund founded in 2017 which invests in disruptive mid-market companies across Europe.
With almost three million job vacancies open in its core markets in June this year, and increasing talent shortages on a global scale, VONQ sees itself as having a large market opportunity ahead of itself. The startup claims that its recruitment marketing technology enables companies to market to potential recruits with pinpoint accuracy.
VONQ’s objective is to use its technology to enable corporate recruiters to attract the right talent – without unnecessary administrative burden. By integrating with more than 2,000 job boards, VONQ’s recruitment marketing platform addresses the major challenges of the traditional recruitment agency model – cost and speed to hire – whilst ensuring quality of candidates.
VONQ’s technology uses a media recommendation algorithm that leverages performance data insights and analytics to create channel recommendations and measure performance. Recruiters are then able to post advertisements automatically using these analytics. Additionally, VONQ assists clients in improving their employer brand profile with carefully targeted awareness campaigns across digital platforms.
Originally founded in 2006, VONQ now serves almost 1,000 corporate clients, including more than 250 large enterprises, many of them household names with whom VONQ has longstanding relationships, such as Lidl and BMW Group.
“We are delighted to have secured this significant investment from capital D,” said Wouter Goedhart, co-founder and CEO of VONQ. “The team has real insights into the fast changing recruitment sector and proactively approached us more than a year ago. We see this as a great opportunity to continue to empower hiring teams to attract the right applicants. In capital D, we’ve found a partner that can further accelerate our growth and help us increase the reach of our recruitment marketing technology on a global scale. We look forward to working with them to build our position in our existing markets and further extend our reach globally.”
“Our focus is on business models that transform industries,” said Jean-Marc Jabre, co-founder of capital D. “VONQ and its leadership team have created an outstanding platform in HR Tech. We see in VONQ the opportunity to become a platform that redefines and resets recruiting for enterprise clients and we look forward to partnering with the team.”
