Mr. OmPrakash Muppirala, Head of Fountain India

Interview with Mr. OmPrakash Muppirala, Head of Fountain India

OmPrakash Muppirala is a VP of Engineering & Head of Fountain India, a platform for high-volume employment.

Following its $100 million Series C funding round, which brought the total funding to $185 million, Fountain, with a vision to expand globally, is now extending its footprints in India to assist and ease the challenges faced by Indian Companies in the high-volume hiring space by addressing high volume recruitment requirements from application, screening, qualification, and hiring process..

Tell us a little about yourself and about your entrepreneurial journey

OmPrakash Muppirala: I’ve been in the software industry for nearly 20 years allowing me to gain a deep understanding of consumer and enterprise technology.

My experience in the industry drives my passion for solving high volume hiring problems through automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing.

As the Head of Fountain India, I lead a global research and development team and help Fortune 100 companies implement Fountain to find, qualify, and hire candidates faster.

Kindly brief us about Fountain, its specialization, and the services that it offers

OmPrakash Muppirala: Fountain is the market leader in the high volume hiring space, enabling customers to get ahead of their hiring goals.

Fountain’s all-in-one platform allows companies to find qualified candidates and move them from application to onboarding quicker, reducing time-to -hire from weeks to days—or even hours.

By simplifying the screening, interviewing, and hiring experience, Fountain’s solutions keep applicants happy while ensuring organizations have pipelines full of hourly talent who are ready to work.

Hundreds of customers use Fountain’s solutions to hire over 3 million workers annually in more than 75 countries.

Following its $100 million Series C funding round, which brought the total funding to $185 million, Fountain built upon its vision to expand globally.

Fountain has extended its footprint in India to assist and ease high volume hiring challenges faced by Indian companies by addressing high volume recruitment requirements from the application, screening, qualification, and hiring processes.

While strengthening its presence globally, the all-in-one hiring platform enables companies to find and hire the right people faster in India, where the majority of the 500-million-person workforce is composed of blue- and gray-collar workers.

This underserved population has been limited when it comes to technology-forward hiring. Fountain plans to change this by bringing its world-class, mobile-first, automated, high volume hiring solution to India.

Fountain is determined to help these companies tackle the increasingly complex and ever-changing challenges like manual outreach activities, messy spreadsheets, and disorganized data that come with the traditional recruitment process.

Fountain plans to invest a significant amount of its capital into high volume hiring in India, including the development of an AI/NLP-enabled chatbot, messaging, and automation-related products.

What are the most important qualities that you look for in potential employees?

OmPrakash Muppirala: A few qualities I look for in potential employees include proven experience in executing the necessary functions of their role, willingness to learn, and whether they are a team player.

These factors will help shed light on their growth and potential impact within the organization and team at large.

What do you see in the future of the job placement industry?

OmPrakash Muppirala: Even in normal circumstances, recruiting a high volume of people is difficult. Companies have been obliged to evaluate different parts of their operations during the past two years due to major changes in operational dynamics.

One of these is recruitment marketing because businesses want to hire a lot of people. The demands of filling a greater-than-average number of posts quickly are exacerbated by a fundamentally altered hiring dynamic.

Many companies are ready to embrace the idea of automated recruitment and put it into practice as a powerful tool for hiring.

Automation is becoming a more important recruitment tool used by forward-thinking managers and businesses to support the hiring process. According to research, 40% of HR departments globally are using technology that is future-proof.

This suggests that 60% of the job is still done manually. According to a number of studies, 69% of management duties will be fully automated by the end of the next two years.

In order to approach the hiring process, many companies and recruiters have resorted to employing virtual platforms and cutting-edge technological solutions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) automates the hiring process and empowers recruiters rather than replacing them.

Automation in the hiring process is designed to assist humans in working more intelligently, leading to proactive hiring rather than ad hoc hiring, while keeping in mind the need to find a balance between automation and the human touch to improve workplace productivity.

What challenges do recruiters face when placing employees in jobs?

OmPrakash Muppirala: The challenge for HR departments in the modern company climate is to function as proactive strategic partners for management or business owners.

The function used to be primarily reactive, but things have changed drastically in recent years, making it much harder and more difficult to attract and retain people. For recruiters, the situation has gotten a lot more complicated, especially since the outbreak.

Evaluating candidates from a wide pool of applications is one of the most time-consuming and difficult duties for HR at any firm. By implementing automation, businesses can lower their time-to-fill and drop-off rates.

When AI technology isn’t used, 65% of applicants leave the process, according to Aptitude Research, and in the high volume employment market, these figures matter.

As technology offers solutions that make recruitment procedures simple, quick, and efficient, businesses must employ tech-based tools to support automation. Blue-collar hiring is time-consuming, expensive, and unstructured.

Recruiters can utilize AI to automate hiring procedures. With more interactions in the system, AI grows robust and produces better outcomes.

If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

OmPrakash Muppirala: The path of an entrepreneur is not straight and narrow. Accept that you will make mistakes, you may need to take a few steps back before you can move forward, or you may need to change directions completely.

Be flexible and adaptable to these changes. Don’t have a rigid vision of what your journey should look like. 

What are your success tips for young and aspiring entrepreneurs?

OmPrakash Muppirala: The best piece of advice I can give young aspiring entrepreneurs is to commit to life-long learning. Learn from your mentors, your mistakes, and by asking questions.

Take the time to understand the role of other business functions and how they impact one another. Invest in your personal development as much as your professional development, and in time you will have developed a well-rounded outlook and skillset fit for an entrepreneurial career path.

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