Toronto, ON (March 11th, 2015) - Kira Talent, the Toronto-based company behind the award-winning talent assessment platform and the creators of Kira Academic, today announces the closing of its $1.2 million seed financing round. The talent assessment platform attracted additional support from existing investors in Kira Talent along with several new contributors. The company plans to use this funding to refine the Kira Academic platform specifically, which allows universities and colleges to more comprehensively assess applicants during the admissions process through the use of timed video and written response questions.
The funding round was a planned second tranche to the company’s first seed round in August 2013. Kira Talent had several existing investors who contributed to the funding round, including lead investor, Relay Ventures, and prominent angel investors, such as Joe Canavan, Anthony Lacavera, Sam Duboc, John Kelleher and Roger Martin. BDC Capital also played a major role in the success of the round as one of the company’s newest investors.
“This investment signals Kira Academic's growth as a leading provider of admissions solutions for higher education,” said Craig Morantz, CEO of Kira Talent. “It will allow us to better serve our existing clients and give even more schools the ability to see prospective students as more than just grades and an application.”
Kira Talent originally launched in 2012 as an assessment tool for businesses hiring purposes. The company later shifted focus to become a full-blown talent assessment platform adaptable to many industries, including higher education, which led to the launch of Kira Academic in 2014. The admissions assessment platform is used by eight of the top 20 business schools, and counts schools like Yale University, Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern), Ivey Business School (Western University), and Notre Dame among their valued clients
“The success of this campaign is really motivating as we forge ahead with Kira Academic,” said Morantz. “Our vision to transform the recruitment landscape has widened from the business world to where we believe recruiting really begins, at the academic level. This funding round is key in developing Kira Academic further to allow schools to place the best and brightest in classrooms.”
In addition to developing the Kira Academic platform, the Kira Talent team plans to invest in sales and marketing services focused on the academic channel to eventually mark its place as the best talent assessment tool for higher education admissions.
For more information please visit: https://www.kiratalent.com/ or https://www.kiraacademic.com/
About Kira Talent:
Kira Talent believes that people and talent are the most important pieces to any successful business or organization. Starting with video interviewing software that changes the way everyone recruits. The Kira Talent team is there to help high caliber organizations and talented people meet and connect with one another from all over the world.
To find out more about Kira Talent, visit https://www.kiratalent.com/.
Media Contact
Savannah Dale
Kira Talent
savannah@kiratalent.com