The opportunity
Small recruiting teams were managing high-volume applicant workflows with fragmented tools and too much manual coordination. RoadToNaukri—later iona.AI—started with a direct question: could a focused product make recruiters faster while giving applicants a clearer experience?
From MVP to a working business
As co-founder, I worked across product discovery, interaction design, architecture, and implementation. We built the first MVP on the MEAN stack, earned angel funding, and brought four early SMB customers onto the product.
The product evolved into a cloud applicant-tracking system rather than a collection of disconnected features. That required more than writing application code: we had to turn customer conversations into product decisions, prioritize the workflows that created the most leverage, and make the system understandable to recruiters using it every day.
Product and engineering choices
- Start with the smallest complete recruiter workflow, then learn from actual use.
- Keep product, design, and engineering decisions close so feedback could change the roadmap quickly.
- Treat workflow clarity as a core product feature, not polish added after implementation.
- Invest in reusable foundations as customer needs began to repeat.
Outcome
The platform supported 70,000+ applicants, reduced time-to-hire by 40%, and doubled recruiter efficiency. The earliest four SMB customers provided the operating feedback that helped turn an idea into a product with measurable value.
What this demonstrates
- Founder-level ownership from ambiguous problem to shipped, funded product.
- The ability to move between architecture, implementation, product judgment, and design.
- Customer-led prioritization without turning the platform into one-off custom software.
- A bias toward measurable outcomes rather than feature volume.