AI is replacing humans in early-stage screening of potential hires. Is it a fad?

Professional networking firm Grapevine, and companies like AssessHub, Hyring and Babblebots are helping outsourcers and retailers to realty firms screen potential hires from large pools of aspirants.

Grapevine uses its ‘Round1’ solution to interview interns. “Soon after launch, my AI took 100 interviews, something I wouldn’t have been able to do manually,” said Saumil Tripathi, co-founder and chief executive at Grapevine.

Since its launch, over 15,000 users have given interviews to an AI, whether to prep themselves for future interviews or brush up their skills, he said. “One or two months from now, this is what is going to be the future of hiring.”

Grapevine’s Tripathi said they are not targeting the entire interviewing process. “We want to come in initially, screen a good candidate and give it to the company.”

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Until now, AI was limited to scanning resumes and recruiters then had to shortlist candidates individually. The process was long and not cost-effective. AI is now filling in that gap. And the opportunity is growing. A report by HR solutions provider Genius Consultants shows that 45% of companies expect to hire for new permanent positions in FY26. It would be safe to assume that AI would play a role in many of these recruitments this year.

Razorpay, for example, is running proof-of-concept projects that use AI for HR functions, both in the pre- and post-hiring phases of a candidate. “We’re evaluating AI-driven tools that can help us conduct the first one or two rounds of conversations and we may want to use that as a step for early assessment or filtering candidates,” said Chitbhanu Nagri,  head of human resources at the fintech company. The unicorn has partnered with MasterPrep AI for initial screening and interviews of potential employees.

Razorpay is also using AI for documentation, be it writing out job descriptions or hiring guidelines for HR associates.

Saving on costs, time

The cost savings for clients using AI for recruitment vary, according to Aditya Narayan Mishra, managing director and chief executive at CIEL HR, a recruitment and staffing services provider. “I’ve seen savings as high as 80% and as low as 20%,” he said. “It depends on the level of the position you’re talking about as well as the number of positions. When the position is slightly junior in nature and the volume is high, then cost savings are high.”

Ajmera Realty has seen its recruitment timelines shrink by 20% after it bought Babblebots’ offerings to automate several aspects of recruitment. Things like CV-matching, after-hours interviews and WhatsApp outreach helped cut timelines. “HR could thus focus on high‑value decision‑making instead of administrative tasks,” said Shweta Rathor, assistant vice president of HR at the real estate and infrastructure firm.

As a result, Rathor said, the HR team saw “indirect cost savings through lower overtime, reduced agency fees, and fewer coordination overheads.”

A startup currently in stealth made a hire for its team using Grapevine’s service. “The prefiltered resumes that Grapevine gave us were helpful. I was able to get people who have the pedigree and technical talent I required,” said its Singapore-based founder Chinmay Chauhan. “We closed the role within a week.”

How AI hiring tools work

In India, the information technology sector, which has fairly standardized key performance indicators and know-how, has been using AI for hiring. “AI tools built for hiring can reduce what takes three months into three days and you can do tens of thousands of interviews in a very short time,” says Pranav Pai, founding partner and chief investment officer at 3one4 Capital.

“AI can map talent, it can match the right people, source them, call and even interview,” said Kamal Karanth, former director and head of Asia Pacific for Randstad, a Dutch HR consulting firm. “AI can handle everything in terms of the filtering aspect of recruiting,” he added.

The recruitment process ends with negotiating pay and onboarding of an employee.

Hyring, which offers AI-based candidate interviewing for now, gives clients access to a dashboard that lets them tweak job requirements as they see fit. This includes the desired skillset and AI-generated questions based on the requirements. It even allows users to set the level of difficulty for the questions.

“Mostly, it’s the MNCs that are using our product. It’s meant for roles that have high volumes and a high churn rate,” said Hyring’s co-founder Adithyan RK, declining to name companies Hyring deals with, citing non-disclosure agreements. 

The startup’s video-screening platform even looks for potential clues for fraud: how many times a person swaps tabs or looks away from the screen. The tool can also check pronunciation, besides evaluating grammar and technical aptitude.

Beyond tech hiring

Hyring’s AI tool helps retail companies to evaluate potential hires and allows colleges and universities to design mock interviews to prep their students for real-world hiring.

Babblebots’ AI product has been used to hire for non-technical roles at both Ajmera Realty and Welspun Enterprises. “Thanks to AI, we are not limited by the technology to focus on only one type of role,” said Babblebots co-founder and chief executive Roli Gupta. “We can pretty much do any role.”

Welspun Enterprises used Babblebots to hire site engineers for projects.

“Babblebots helped us create specific interview questions which the AI would ask, rate and then give it to us. [From among] whoever met our cut-off percentage, our interviewer would only interview the top five or six,” said Lekha Raghavan, head of HR at Welspun Enterprises. In terms of man-hours, that’s over a 50% reduction in the time spent on interviewing, Raghavan said.

Hyring claims to have completed over 37,000 interviews, saving 1,87,484 HR man-hours. Adithyan said the company is on track to become cash-flow positive in the next three months.  

Similarly, Babblebots’ website claims to have conducted over 30,000 interviews, saving over 5,000 man-hours. The company expects to hit $1 million annual recurring revenue by the end of FY26, just over two years after it launched its product in 2023, according to Gupta.

AssessHub, a cloud-based skill assessment platform for scouting talent, introduced an AI-led interview tool two years ago. In that time, the vertical’s contribution to revenue hovered between 20% and 30%. “In FY26, we expect the revenue to more than double and eventually become equally strong a revenue as generated from the rest of our verticals,” said co-founder Amit Desai. The company claims to have clients including banks, retailers, financial services firms, staffing companies and a few mid-cap services firms.

Long-term sustainability in doubt

However, the question is whether these businesses will remain feasible. “A lot of this is curiosity revenue. Enterprises are trying a lot of tools at once because everyone is trying out AI to be able to say they’re tech-forward and thinking ahead. A lot of this revenue might not stick,” said Pai of 3one4 Capital.

Companies could end up going back to old systems of carrying out interviews, screening candidates and making calls. Or they may build HR tools in-house—something that the Welspun Group did.

Its global capacity centre in Ahmedabad built an in-house system for AI interviewing, helping it cut both HR costs and tech spend.

The group launched a pilot with one of its group companies, and Welspun Enterprises is now rolling it out for low to mid-level hiring for high-volume roles like planning engineers and even accountants. “We intend to increase our adoption by around 50%. Last year, we did it only for a few positions. This year we’ll do it for more positions,” said Raghavan.

Success not guaranteed

Not everyone has had success with AI videos for initial interviews. CIEL HR, which received Sebi approval to go public in February, said its video solution was received poorly. “People didn’t feel very safe to have a conversation with an AI and whether they can disclose specific information,” said CEO Mishra.

The company now uses AI agents by HYRGPT and AssessHub to streamline what Mishra calls the “transactional” parts of recruitment like scheduling interviews, dos and don’ts, and documentation needed.

Also, there is not much to distinguish AI hiring tools. “Currently, there are no moats; all the products look the same,” said 3one4 Capital’s Pai. “The margins are lower than SaaS because running an LLM (large language model), the cost of running GUPs [to process AI computing] is much higher.”