Austrian Boys Move To India & Build Tinder-like AI App For Jobs

Recent reports show that more and more Indian startups are ‘reverse-flipping’ and relocating their headquarters to India. The country is becoming friendlier to new businesses, and investor sentiment and regulatory reforms are positive.

Three young entrepreneurs from Austria seem to have jumped on the train of building a startup in India. Two of them have even moved to India permanently!

Gregor Reitinger, Patrick Ranner, and Leon Hartl are the founders of RRHAi Tech, a Hyderabad-based startup that aims to revolutionize the future of hiring by decentralizing it and introducing a blend of blockchain and Artificial Intelligence in the recruitment process.

Their soon-to-be-launched product is Monkify.ai which will have a simple mission: make hiring faster, secure, and more efficient for everyone involved.

It’s one of the very few recruitment platforms in the world that integrate Blockchain technology.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Hailing from Austria, Gregor Reitinger and Patrick Ranner became best friends while they were in school in Austria. They went on to enroll themselves in a mechanical engineering degree, but Gregor dropped out of it.

In an exclusive interview with Startup Pedia, Gregor says, “When I dropped out, I started juggling various jobs. I worked as a bartender and waiter. Then I got into the insurance field and sold insurance policies. That’s when I met Leon and recognized how great he was at sales. We immediately became friends.”

On the other hand, Patrick landed jobs in the mechanical engineering field.

Even though the three of them were doing their own thing, they would often discuss entrepreneurship and the possibility of starting something on their own.

Gregor says, “I was always inclined to build new things. When I was 12, I was working on building something similar to Snapchat. But then life happened and I dropped it. Years later, when I started discussing opening a new business with Patrick and Leon, I knew this time it was for real.”

The three of them zeroed down on innovating something in the tech field. They identified a key gap in the current recruitment processes that hiring managers and candidates were following.

“The problem is that recruitment is often slowed down because of a lot of paperwork. Even with online job portals, a lot of company time goes behind assessing candidates, qualifying them for preliminary rounds, and then scheduling their interviews. We decided to make this faster with AI,” Patrick explains.

That is how RRHAi Tech was born in 2019 and officially founded in 2023. 

Patrick, Gregor, and Leon decided to build Monkify.ai under RRHAi, integrate blockchain, and make hiring decentralized and safe. 

Gregor and Patrick decided to build a tech startup in India and be a part of the rapid development the country is witnessing. Leon, on the other hand, supports the startup from Austria itself. 

“Great talent and a very feasible and welcoming working environment for new businesses—that is India for you. Coming here was the right step,” Gregor adds.

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MONKIFY.AI: THE FUTURE OF HIRING

Gregor and Patrick told Startup Pedia about certain key features of the platform and how it stands apart from the numerous other job portals in the recruitment industry. 

Gregor says, “Even though platforms like LinkedIn and Naukri.com exist, they haven't yet cracked how to simplify the job search and job placement process for hiring managers and candidates. It's still lengthy, involves a lot of clicks, and is tedious. That's exactly where Monkify.ai will come into the game.”

The founders call Monkify ‘the smart way to hire.’ Its key features include but are not limited to:

1. A decentralized approach where users and companies have full control of their data. No one, not even Monkify, gets access to it.

2. Communication between companies and job seekers happens with speed and security.

3. For job seekers, Monkify removes the need for uploading CVs, looking at long lists of jobs, and applying to them separately. It makes the process super easy and fun by introducing a Tinder-like way of swiping left or right to jobs you like or dislike. Users can even ‘Super Like’ a job they’re interested in.

4. The application gets to know the job seeker through a series of questions, both skill and personality-based. If at all a user wants to upload their resume, that is analyzed and taken into account as well. Once that’s done, through smart contracts and blockchain technology, the job seeker starts getting recommended as a viable hire for companies looking for similar profiles or skills.

5. Companies, enterprises, and hiring managers benefit from automated application processing and prequalification and assessment—all powered by AI.

6. For companies and enterprises, Monkify.ai automates the onboarding process—from offer letters to employee contracts, everything becomes seamless.

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Monkify.ai is looking at at least a 50% increase in data security and integrity through blockchain, a 40% decrease in hiring time, and a 25% enhanced interviewer/hiring manager experience.

According to Gregor and Patrik, the end goal remains to make Monkify.ai a time and cost-efficient platform for job seekers and companies.

“We are looking at building an ecosystem where everyone feels comfortable sharing data because they know there is no way it will be mishandled,” Gregor says.

LOOKING AHEAD

The founders credit a lot of Monkify.ai’s progress to the team of engineers, coders, and designers that they have built in India. Patrick and Gregor say, “We wouldn’t have this far without them.”

Monkify.ai is scheduled to be taken live for testing on the 7th of December 2024. The platform has already garnered quite a few pre-launch clients in India. It’ll be officially launched in January 2025.

Gregor Reitinger, Patrick Ranner, and Leon Hartl are working with a singular mission: to change how the world looks at hiring today. As next steps, they’re also planning on building a 100% decentralized CRM platform for end-to-end recruitment and employee management.

They sign off by saying, “We know what your next job is going to look like. And we want it to come to you in a faster, better, and safer fashion.”

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