How Talhive Scaled Khatabook's Tech Team by 40 Engineers in 6 Months

The Challenge

Khatabook, India’s leading digital ledger app with 10M+ active SMB users, had secured Series B funding and needed to triple its engineering headcount within six months to support aggressive product expansion.

The challenge: hiring 40 senior engineers — backend, data, infrastructure, and mobile — without diluting the bar on technical quality.

The Brief

• Roles: Senior Backend Engineers (Go, Python), Data Engineers, Mobile Engineers (Android/iOS), Data Scientists, Engineering Managers
• Timeline: 6 months
• Geography: Bangalore, remote-first for select roles
• Volume: 40 hires across 8 functions

Talhive’s Approach

Phase 1: Search Manifesto (Week 1–2)

We conducted stakeholder discovery calls with the CTO, VP Engineering, and each hiring manager. The output was a role-by-role Search Manifesto — a detailed brief documenting success metrics, cultural fit indicators, and compensation benchmarks for each function.

Phase 2: Parallel Sourcing Tracks

With eight concurrent searches, we deployed separate sourcing teams for each vertical. Rather than relying on job portals, we sourced exclusively through:

• Direct LinkedIn outreach to engineers at high-bar companies (Google, Flipkart, Swiggy, CRED)
• Internal referral networks from previous Talhive placements
• Engineering community sourcing (GitHub, Kaggle, tech conference speaker lists)

Phase 3: CDQ Evaluation

Every candidate underwent our Career Discovery Questionnaire — a structured 45-minute conversation exploring:

• Career trajectory and motivation for leaving
• Problem-solving depth (technical scenarios relevant to Khatabook’s stack)
• Cultural alignment with a high-velocity startup

Phase 4: Shortlist & Close

We delivered rolling shortlists of 3–5 candidates per role. Khatabook’s hiring managers conducted two rounds of interviews; Talhive managed scheduling, candidate experience, offer negotiation, and onboarding preparation.

Results

What Khatabook Said

“Talhive didn’t just fill seats — they understood what good engineering talent looks like for a company at our stage. The quality bar was consistently high, and they moved fast without cutting corners.” — VP Engineering, Khatabook