San Fran/BOSTON —Instawork, the leading digital marketplace connecting local businesses with skilled hourly professionals across the U.S., today announced it has acquired Drafted, a network recruiting platform that helps businesses hire by leveraging referrals.
Drafted’s solution will enable Instawork to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to accelerate the growth of the company’s pool of Pros with skilled hourly professionals. As a result of the acquisition and integration, Pros can easily share Instawork job opportunities with their network, further supporting the companies’ shared mission to put Americans back to work and help businesses successfully reopen. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Network referrals are one of the best ways to find and hire qualified talent, and Drafted technology is helping Instawork take a giant leap forward in supporting the needs of American businesses looking to fill a record level of openings,” said Sumir Meghani, co-founder and CEO of Instawork. “We’ve experienced the value of referrals firsthand given we have grown the Instawork network to over a million professionals, primarily through word of mouth. The Drafted team’s expertise will enable us to accelerate this organic growth and use of technology, helping us to quickly scale our community of qualified professionals and further long-term satisfaction with both sides of our marketplace.”
The Drafted platform will support Instawork’s recruiting and rewards program, and also offers tracking and management tools to streamline and drive efficiencies within the referral and hiring process. As part of the acquisition, Drafted’s entire team has joined Instawork.
“Drafted and Instawork have a shared mission to create economic opportunities for workers and their networks, and we look forward to accelerating Instawork’s growth and match quality talent with more open shifts,” said Vinayak Ranade, founder and CEO of Drafted. “There’s no better time to bring our offering to the labor force and businesses in need, and we’re thrilled to be an integral part of Instawork’s next phase of growth.”
Instawork’s marketplace matches thousands of businesses with millions of qualified hourly professionals who want flexible work and higher wages, solving the current barriers to staffing facing businesses today: flexibility, response time, reach, and scale. With more than one million professionals on the platform, Instawork provides businesses access to qualified people who want to work. Coming off of its Series C funding, the acquisition will allow Instawork to continue its goal of rapidly expanding into new markets, job categories, and industries, while also investing in more training and development initiatives to help hourly professionals advance their careers.
Instawork currently supports a number of industries, including food and beverage, hospitality, retail, and warehouse logistics in 25 markets across the U.S.
