Firstwork Raises $15 Million Series A to Automate Frontline Hiring

By Daniel Okafor

Firstwork has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Earlybird Venture Capital, taking total funding for the AI onboarding startup to $20 million. The round, backed by Y Combinator, did not disclose a valuation.

Legion VC and Deel Ventures joined as new investors. Existing backers Gradient and Y Combinator also participated, along with SOMA Capital, 468 Capital and Houghton Street Ventures, according to reports.

Vardhan Kapoor and Shubham Choudhary founded Firstwork in 2024 and went through Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch, where the startup pitched itself as "Rippling for seasonal workers." It raised a $5 million seed round in February 2025.

What does Firstwork actually do?

Firstwork targets the gap between a worker accepting a job and showing up for the first shift. In healthcare, logistics and delivery, that stretch is filled with paperwork. Many candidates drop out before they ever start.

Its AI agents handle the load end to end: document verification, background and right-to-work checks, onboarding, training coordination, compliance management and follow-ups. The agents contact candidates by text or phone to request documents and arrange training. They operate inside an employer's existing HR, payroll and screening systems, so customers keep the software they already run.

The startup said more than 1.5 lakh frontline workers now start work through its platform every month. Customers including Deel, Job&Talent, Relay, Wonolo and BGSF have cut the time workers and HR teams spend on each new hire by up to 90%, it said. At one of its largest customers, the platform helped triple the number of qualified applicants who reached their first shift.

"The systems employers rely on were built to record what happened, not to actually do the work," said Kapoor, the company's co-founder and CEO. He said the platform supports workers "from the moment they apply through every stage of their employment."

Why the investors wrote the check

Tim Rehder, General Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, said Firstwork is addressing "one of the largest untouched opportunities for applied AI in enterprise software." He said its agents are "performing millions of actions every month to reduce the time to clear a worker from days to minutes."

Rehder pointed to the size of the prize. "Firstwork competes for the far larger budget employers spend on people and outsourced teams who do onboarding by hand," he said.

One backer carries dual weight. Deel, the HR and payroll company valued at $17.3 billion, is both a customer and, through Deel Ventures, now an investor.

Where the money goes

Firstwork plans to spend the capital on its applied AI, AI research, engineering and go-to-market teams, and to deepen its presence in the US and Europe. It also plans to push its agents beyond onboarding into later stages of employment: credential renewals, recurring training and ongoing compliance management, the startup said.

About 80% of its roughly 45 employees work from Bengaluru. The company is opening a London office to support European customers.

Who is building it?

Kapoor earlier led the Asia-Pacific business at money transfer company Remitly and headed strategy at food delivery company Deliveroo in Singapore, where he recruited thousands of frontline workers. Choudhary, the CTO, was a Director of Engineering at Deel. Before that, he built core infrastructure for Rippling's employer of record systems.

Is Firstwork alone in this market?

No. Several Indian startups are building AI tools for frontline and gig worker hiring:

• Hunar.AI, based in Bengaluru, raised Rs 39.3 crore in a Series A led by Blume Ventures this week. Its conversational AI agents handle sourcing, screening, onboarding, training and retention over voice, WhatsApp and chat. Clients include Swiggy, Delhivery, Flipkart and Blue Dart.
• TurboHire, based in Hyderabad, raised $6 million in a Series A led by IvyCap Ventures in August 2025 for its agentic AI recruitment platform.
• TraqCheck offers AI-powered background verification and recruitment agents, while HireBound automates candidate sourcing, screening and evaluation.

The demand sits on a demographic curve. NITI Aayog projects that India's gig workforce will grow from around 1 crore workers in 2024-25 to 2.35 crore by 2029-30. Firstwork now has the capital and the investor base to chase that growth on two continents at once.