Divya Kulshreshtha

Case Study · Naukri PremiumX · 2026

Case Study · Info Edge Naukri PremiumX

AI-powered premium talent discovery.

Hiring premium talent is fundamentally different from hiring at scale. The pool is smaller, the signals are more nuanced, and the cost of a wrong hire compounds for years. PremiumX upgrades Naukri's revenue driver Resdex into a flagship experience built for exactly that.

Design Lead Role

85%+ Of India's premium talent

5× More cost effective

Web & App Surface

Naukri PremiumX premium hiring experience

FIG. 01 — Premium discovery surface

How I went about it

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The Approach

Premium hiring needs a different approach — not a louder one.

Senior recruiters have always known this. The work was turning that instinct into a product thesis — then designing the discovery, trust, and connect layers that make it real.

i 01 / 06

Study why premium is different

Smaller pool, harder-to-read signals, compounding cost of a wrong hire. I started from the reality of premium hiring — not from the features of mass hiring.

ii 02 / 06

Listen to senior recruiters

Their biggest edge: filtering a large pool quickly and reaching the right shortlist with confidence. Every design decision traced back to that sentence.

iii 03 / 06

Frame the four essentials

Talent availability, faster discovery, easier connect, cost-efficient hiring — a shared framework that aligned product, design, and sales on what "premium" must deliver.

iv 04 / 06

Design the whole funnel

Search → shortlist → verify → reach out. PremiumX had to elevate each step, not just repaint the search results page.

v 05 / 06

Make trust visible

NChecked verification, top-institute pedigree, similar-company context — the signals senior recruiters actually weigh, promoted to first-class UI.

vi 06 / 06

Ship as a flagship tier

A distinct PremiumX identity within Naukri's design system — elevated and calm, across web and app, without breaking recruiters' existing workflow.

Why it was hard

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The Challenge

Premium talent is rare, elusive, and everyone wants it.

Demand for India's premium talent is growing at roughly 20% CAGR — GCCs, Fortune 500 India operations, funded startups, and unicorns all chasing the same narrow pool of leaders and specialists.

01 / 06

The pool is narrow — and contested

Leaders, specialists, and highly qualified professionals are a fraction of the market, and every serious employer in India is competing for the same names.

02 / 06

The best candidates aren't looking

The most valuable candidate for a senior role is often passive. Classic search built around active job-seekers simply never surfaces them.

03 / 06

Premium signals are nuanced

Pedigree, industry context, company scale, CTC band, notice period — generic matching reads none of these well, so relevance collapses at the top of the market.

04 / 06

Verification devours hours

Recruiters spend hours confirming CTC, notice period, and designation before a single meaningful conversation. For senior hires, that legwork is the bottleneck.

05 / 06

Outreach falls flat at the top

Senior talent ignores yet another templated email. Reaching them means meeting them on the channels where they actually respond.

06 / 06

Premium tools price like luxuries

Existing premium hiring solutions charge for exclusivity, not outcomes. A wrong hire compounds for years — but so does an inflated cost per hire.

iii

The emergent challenge

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How might we

Make discovering rare, premium talent as fast and precise as hiring at scale.

The goal: unite availability, discovery, connect, and cost into one flagship experience — so recruiters spend their time on the right candidates, not on finding them.

Plate Nº 05 — Concept PremiumX — a flagship discovery tier 85%+ of India's premium talent (CTC > ₹30L)

Introducing Naukri PremiumX

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The Solution

Built around four essentials of premium hiring.

Naukri PremiumX is a curated discovery experience for premium and leadership hiring — a deep, trusted talent pool, an AI matching layer tuned for premium signals, and connect channels where senior candidates actually respond.

Talent Availability

A large, active pool of premium candidates — deep enough to trust before discovery can be fast.

Faster Discovery

Fast, precise identification of the right profiles — refined shortlists over endless scrolling.

iii

Easier Connect

Engaging candidates on the channels where they're most responsive — not just another email.

Cost-Efficient Hiring

Maximising outcomes while minimising spend — premium results without premium-solution pricing.

85%+

of India's premium white-collar professionals (CTC > ₹30L) are on PremiumX — growing 30%+ YoY

75%+

of premium talent seeking opportunities is active on PremiumX

70%+

of IIM grads register on PremiumX within 3 years

50%+

of IIT / NIT grads register on PremiumX within 3 years

* Premium talent pool (CTC > ₹30L); estimates based on projections from FY'23 ITR data.

CAPABILITY — 01 / 06 ● Premium matching

A matching algorithm tuned for premium

Built specifically to surface the most relevant premium talent: it reads candidate profiles with industry context, prioritises premium-fit candidates, and personalises ranking to each recruiter's past activity. The outcome — refined shortlists, higher relevance, more time on the right candidates.

Personalisation Noise removal Precise matching

FIG. 02 — Three pillars of matching

FIG. 03 — Active + passive, side by side

CAPABILITY — 02 / 06 ● Unified universe

Active and passive talent in one view

The most valuable candidate for a senior role is often the one who isn't looking. PremiumX brings active job-seekers and passive premium professionals into the same unified search — so recruiters evaluate the full universe of relevant talent in a single workflow, and no one is missed.

CAPABILITY — 03 / 06 ● Exclusive filters

Shortlisting filters that think like a senior recruiter

The exact criteria senior recruiters weigh when shortlisting, promoted to one-click filters — exclusive to PremiumX. NChecked surfaces only candidates whose critical details Naukri has already cross-checked; Similar Companies finds talent from organisations of matching industry and scale; Top Institutes isolates IIT, NIT, and IIM pedigree instantly.

NChecked profiles Similar companies Top institutes

FIG. 04 — Filters exclusive to PremiumX

FIG. 05 — Multi-channel outreach

CAPABILITY — 04 / 06 ● Easier connect

Reach candidates where they actually respond

PremiumX connects recruiters to premium talent across the channels they're most active on — notifications, WhatsApp, automated calls, email, and Naukri inbox — raising response rates while cutting the manual outreach grind.

Notifications WhatsApp Automated call Email Naukri inbox

CAPABILITY — 05 / 06 ● Verified trust

NChecked — the legwork, already done

For senior hires, verifying critical details is the most time-consuming part of the process. With NChecked, Naukri's team has already cross-checked 14+ key details — current CTC breakup, company duration, notice period, designation, location, job-search status, and more — so recruiters move straight to the conversations that matter.

FIG. 06 — Verification as a product

FIG. 07 — Lowest cost per premium hire

CAPABILITY — 06 / 06 ● Cost-efficient

Premium outcomes, without premium pricing

Availability, discovery, and connect — all at a fraction of the cost. PremiumX does the heavy lifting so recruiters focus on closing quality, high-impact hires. The result: up to 5× more cost effective than other premium hiring solutions.

The intelligence layer

Not just who matches — why they're the one.

Surfacing relevant profiles is only half the job. A layer of AI reads every candidate and the pool around them, translating dense CVs into the differentiating signals a recruiter would otherwise dig out by hand — so the strongest people are obvious, faster.

INTELLIGENCE LAYER — 01 / 03 ● Search-aware summaries

A summary written for this search

For every candidate, PremiumX generates a short, search-specific read — why this person fits the exact role being hired for, drawn from their real trajectory rather than a generic bio. Recruiters gauge credibility and relevance in seconds, before ever opening the full profile.

Query-specific Credibility signals No manual reading

Ananya Rao Staff Frontend Engineer · Bengaluru

AI summary

Search Staff Frontend Engineer · fintech · React

8 yrs building consumer fintech UIs — led the React design-system rebuild at a Series-C startup, now scaling it inside an enterprise. Strong on payments-grade frontend and team leadership; every stint 3 yrs+.

✓ High credibility — 14 details NChecked, no gaps in tenure

FIG. 08 — Search-specific candidate summary

Ananya Rao 8y exp · ₹48L · 30-day notice

Profile signals

Avg 3.4 yrs / stint Product company Startup → enterprise Tier-1 institute 2 fast-track promotions Leads team of 12

Signals summarise what sets this profile apart — no profile-opening required.

FIG. 09 — Differentiating profile chips

INTELLIGENCE LAYER — 02 / 03 ● Profile signal chips

The context that sets a candidate apart

PremiumX distils each profile into a row of signal chips — average years per stint, product vs. service background, startup-to-enterprise trajectory, institute tier, promotion velocity. The qualities a recruiter would otherwise dig for, surfaced up front so the strongest candidates stand out at a glance.

Stint stability Product / service Startup → enterprise

INTELLIGENCE LAYER — 03 / 03 ● Pool intelligence

Read the whole pool at a glance

Before scrolling a single profile, recruiters see what the search actually returned — headline highlights and the segments inside them: product vs. service split, seniority and institute mix, and the standout profile types. A raw result count becomes a map of the talent available.

Pool highlights Segment breakdown Profile types

2,480premium profiles for “Staff Frontend Engineer · fintech”

Pool insights

Product · 64%Service · 36%

38% Tier-1 institute 52% 5–10 yrs exp 2.1k NChecked

Standout profile types in this pool

Design-system leads Payments frontend Startup → enterprise movers

FIG. 10 — Pool-level highlights & segments

Beyond the product

Where software ends, service begins.

Premium hiring doesn't finish at a great search result. PremiumX pairs the product with expert-led layers for the searches that matter most.

Service layer PremiumX Assist

Expert-led hiring support built for premium and leadership roles — a dedicated team of experienced recruiters handles sourcing and shortlisting, so internal teams focus on interviewing the best.

Expert-led · paid tier

Service layer Concierge Support

Proactive search-query optimisation, pipeline building, and closure support — sharper data-backed decisions and significantly reduced time-to-hire through guided workflows.

Guided workflows

Network effects AI recommendations from iimjobs & hirist.tech

While searching, PremiumX intelligently recommends relevant talent from iimjobs and hirist.tech — and job postings distribute to both in one click. Reach expands without changing the recruiter's process.

Coming soon

From mass-market to flagship

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Connect for the full story

Premium discovery that earns its place.

There's more behind the matching model, the NChecked trust layer, and the rollout across web and app. I'm glad to walk through the decisions, trade-offs, and outcomes directly.

Talk to me — 15 min Back to all work

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