Arjun Singh
Tokyo, Japan : After a successful launch in Japan, Japanese tech start-ups bitgrit and Atrae brings their professional job ‘matching’ app in India. The Yenta app will allow professionals and employers to ‘swipe right’ to the profiles of their interest.
Under the initiative, the company is also inviting data scientists from around the world for an online competition — ‘SwipeToSuccess’ — to submit their optimization models for the app. Starting today, the competition will be accepting the optimization algorithms for the next 69 days — until October 31, 2020.
The top five submissions will be rewarded with cash prizes totaling US$10,000 (nearly ₹7.4 lakh).
Global data science platform bitgrit has collaborated with Atrae, a Japanese internet company, to launch their professional job ‘matching’ and networking application — Yenta app — to bridge the talent gap in India. The joint initiative will allow professionals to connect and engage with hiring managers for jobs in India and Japan.
Under the initiative, the company is also inviting data scientists from around the world for an online competition — ‘SwipeToSuccess’ — to submit their optimization models for the app. The idea is to build a model to predict the level of compatibility of a pair of users based on their profiles — and ensure that the app recommends the most linked and suitable profiles to the users.
“We are pleased to announce the launch of yenta in India as our first base for global expansion in collaboration with bitgrit. India’s data science community is inevitably going to grow in the future. With this competition, we aim to tap the potential of data scientists and expand the services provided by the Yenta app across India,” said the CTO of Atrae Corporation, Toshiyuki Oka.
The competition will kickstart on Monday (August 24) and will be accepting optimization algorithms for the next 69 days (till October 31, 2020). The top five submissions will be rewarded with cash prizes totalling USD10,000 (nearly ₹7.4 lakh).
Commenting on the launch, TetsuroMasunaga, Co-founder & CEO of bitgrit said “We are pleased to partner with Atrae for the expansion of their yenta app to India and this online AI competition to improve the app’s profile-matching algorithm. This partnership will strengthen bitgrit’s data science community and provide a platform to showcase their domain skills in emerging technologies.”
The mobile application, which was first launched in Japan in 2016, aims to connect professionals in the IT space. It currently has users from over 20,000 companies where professionals can network, get a job, engage with industry experts and founders for partnerships. The cross-industry platform will enable employers to spot and hire skilled talent and also interact with other business owners. The professionals and employers registered on the Yenta app can ‘swipe right’ on a suitable match and chat with them if the other user also likes the profile. “You swipe right on profiles you’re interested in, and if the other person is also interested and swipes right on your profile, you can message, meet up, and submit a review for each other,” Oka explained.
The ongoing pandemic has created a massive job loss as businesses came to a grinding halt. As per the data by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the urban unemployment rate in India stood at 9.15% in June — higher than rural unemployment. “This initiative is even more relevant now with the coronavirus-induced economic crisis that has severely impacted businesses, thereby triggering unemployment on a large scale,” Masunaga added.
The application is available for both iOS and Android users. The details of the competition can be viewed here.
About bitgrit – Founded in 2017, bitgrit is a global data science community-based in Tokyo with over 29,000 data scientists. The AI-driven platform aims to develop data-driven solutions across industries like hospitality, tech, and financial services. The startup has campus ambassadors and partnerships with over 30 universities in India – including the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
About Atrae – Atrae is a Tokyo-based People Tech Company that was formulated in 2003 with a vision to create businesses that expand people’s possibilities through technology.
