Tuesday, December 13 2005 17:17 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: MeriTrac Services, India's largest Assessments player, has raised Rs 16.5 crore from HAV2 (Mauritius) Limited for its growth plans, including setting up of a chain of Integrated Recruitment Centres across India and offering Talent Pool Analytics services to corporates across the spectrum.

"The funding, the first such in the Indian services space advised by HSBC Private Equity Technology (Asia) Limited will be deployed to propel MeriTrac to the next level of growth," Murlidhar, Co-Founder & Director of the company told reporters here today.

"The Integrated Recruitment Centres would be set up in next seven to eight months in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai with an investment of Rs 1 crore in each centre," he said.

"The first centre in Hyderabad would be a 50-seater centre with the capability to administer a suite of over 150 testing using OnTrac- MeriTrac's Online Test Delivery software. The Centre would also house Online/Offline Test rooms, rooms for interview and group discussion," Murlidhar said.

"The center would be functional seven days a week, 12 hours a day and would be operated by a team of qualified experts from MeriTrac," he said.

Assessments have matured as a key point in the HR value chain and "time is ripe for a new model of having on-stop assessment centres where candidate's brand experience is critical. These centres in addition to adding another revenue stream to MeriTrac also complement its existing services portfolio as well," Murlidhar said.

The company would also leverage its knowledge about talent pool to offer "Talent Pool Analytics" services to corporates across the spectrum. As part of this new initiative, MeriTrac has undertaken India's first ever comprehensive survey on the engineering talent pool in India, Madan Padaki, the other Co-Founder of the company said. \ Founded in 2000, MeriTrac is the pioneer and leader in Skills Assessment and Recruitment Process Outsourcing space with aggressive plans to enter other related services over a period.

Headquartered in Bangalore, the company is present in ten centres across India. It has over 175 employees and has assessed over 8,00,000+ candidates for over 100 marquee clients, including those in the IT and BPO sector.