Monish Karam, a manipuri youth and founder of Jobsenz has received a $40,000 grant from Facebook to develop a mobile application which he founded in 2015.
Monish Karam based out of Singapore received the grant under the FbStart initiative, which helps startups.
FbStart initiative, Facebook’s worldwide program which helps mobile startups, selected Jobsenz for its impressive development.
“We applied for it and the minimum criteria is to have an app which has gained some traction. According to Facebook, the app was chosen because of its impressive development so far and its potential for continued growth. We have already crossed a significant number of downloads in India ,” said Karam, who is from Imphal.
From job search, multi-lingual resume builder to preparing for jobs or exams with live exams, flashcards and study notes, the application provides a complete solution.
“It includes a marketplace where coaching centers or educators can sell or share their course content directly to students or job-seekers,” added Karam.
Earlier, Karam had received an entrepreneurship award while studying for his MBA at the National University of Singapore and IE Business School in Madrid. With that money, Karam started a software product (recruitSenz) which was later sold to a company in Singapore.
“While working on recruitSenz, we realized we missed to add an interface website for candidates to apply for jobs created in recruitSenz. We turned this missing feature into a new product (Jobsenz),” he added.
With the assistance from Facebook, Karam is hopeful of expanding his reach even further. “So far, we were working in stealth mode as the focusing was on product market fit. With the download growth and validation from Facebook, we believe users can now benefit from its full features. Going ahead, we will be bringing in some funds to enhance our features for a wider reach in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” he said.