About

We started D4hire to fix a problem we kept seeing.

Founders and CTOs of product companies need a few specific things from a recruiter: deep understanding of the work, calibrated shortlists, and someone who treats every hire as a long-term decision — not a quarterly target. We rarely saw that in the IT recruitment market. So we built it.

Our story

D4hire was founded in 2026 by Deepak Kumar and Dilip Kumar. Between us, we have spent more than two decades inside Indian IT recruitment — at firms like CareerNet, Sequoia, Rippling, Carousell, InterviewBit, Paytm Money, Airstack, and ECC.

We have built founding engineering teams for early-stage startups, run senior technical searches for Indian unicorns, led talent acquisition inside fast-scaling product companies, and built India teams for global MNCs entering the market. D4hire is where all of that experience now goes to work for you.

We started D4hire because we wanted to work the way good hiring actually happens: a small number of carefully selected mandates, run by senior recruiters who understand the technology, with real partnership between the founder team and the hiring team. We are based in Kochi, Kerala, and source across India's six major tech hubs — Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, and Delhi / NCR.

The D4 promise

The name says it. The process delivers it.

D4hire stands for four commitments we make on every search.

Discover

Understand the work first — your product, your stack, your team — then map the real market, not just active job-seekers.

Design

Calibrate every search to your specific role and standards. No templates, no spray-and-pray.

Deliver

3 to 5 candidates we genuinely believe in — with our written assessment of each. Not a resume flood.

Drive

Stay with the search through offer, counter-offer, notice period, and joining. We close hires, not just present them.

Meet the founders

Two recruiters. Two decades of combined IT hiring experience. One discipline.

D4hire was started by Deepak Kumar and Dilip Kumar — both senior IT recruiters who have spent their careers building engineering teams for the companies most Indian software engineers would immediately recognise. Between us, we have hired for product startups from their first engineer to their first hundred, run senior technical searches for Indian unicorns, built India teams for global MNCs, and led talent acquisition inside fast-scaling product companies. We started D4hire to do that work the way we believe it should be done.

Deepak Kumar

Co-Founder & Recruiting Partner

14 years · CareerNet, InterviewBit, Paytm Money, PharmEasy, Airstack, ECC

Deepak brings 14 years of IT recruitment experience across India's product startup, MNC, and frontier-tech ecosystems — spanning agency, in-house TA, and independent consulting.

He started at CareerNet Technologies, hiring for Amazon, Walmart Labs, and Inmobi, and built founding engineering teams for early-stage startups including CK12 and Zendrive. At InterviewBit, as the third employee, he built engineering teams for Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Uber, Rippling, and Mindtickle.

He then moved in-house — leading talent acquisition at Paytm Money (30+ senior technical hires, Star Performer 2018-19), PharmEasy, and Airstack, where he scaled engineering from 10 to 30 in under a year as the first TA Manager.

As an independent consultant between 2020 and 2023, Deepak partnered with Metamap, Meesho, Carousell, Mindtickle, Navi, and Rupifi to build founding engineering teams and place CTOs, Engineering Managers, and Architects.

Most recently, as Talent Leader at ECC (backed by Hashed Emergent), he ran high-velocity hiring for Web3, AI, and frontier-tech startups across India and global markets.

At D4hire, Deepak leads founder and CTO engagement, executive search delivery, and India team setup for global companies.

Dilip Kumar

Co-Founder

10+ years · CareerNet, InterviewBit, Rippling, Carousell, Sequoia Consulting Group

Dilip brings over a decade of IT recruitment experience, with a track record of building hiring engines at some of the most demanding product companies in India.

He spent four-plus years at Sequoia Consulting Group, a US-headquartered HR-tech firm, leading senior technical hiring for its India engineering team — across backend, frontend, mobile, and data engineering. Before that, he was the 7th employee at Rippling, building their entire technical hiring function from scratch — exactly the founding-team work D4hire now does for its clients. He was also the first HR hire in India for Carousell, the Singapore-headquartered marketplace, owning end-to-end tech and non-tech hiring for its India operations.

Earlier, at InterviewBit, Dilip headhunted senior engineers for product clients including Amazon, Flipkart, Rippling, Ola, and Grofers — and started his career at CareerNet Technologies.

At D4hire, Dilip owns end-to-end search execution — market mapping, candidate outreach, technical screening, and close. Every shortlist a D4hire client sees has been calibrated by him first.

Where we've hired

Our founders have built engineering teams for Amazon, Flipkart, Uber, Walmart Labs, Myntra, Meesho, Paytm, PharmEasy, Carousell, Rippling, Inmobi, Metamap, Navi, Rupifi, and Mindtickle — across roles at CareerNet, InterviewBit, ECC, and in-house TA teams.

Advisors & Partners

Senior operators who work with us on the work.

D4hire partners with senior operators who work with us on specialised searches and capabilities — from technical evaluation to APAC and GTM hiring.

Abhinava Kashyap

Technical Talent & Partnerships Partner

Myntra · Loadshare · Meaww · Flits · Early-stage startup founder

15+ years building production systems across backend, distributed systems, data platforms, microservices, and AI/ML-adjacent infrastructure. Partners with D4hire on technical advisory — helping evaluate senior engineering candidates and shape what “good” looks like for specialised searches.

LinkedIn →

Chandramita Sarma

Strategic Talent Partner

Okta · Twilio · Branch · Fivetran · PayPal · eBay · Amazon

14+ years as a Strategic Talent Partner — building Engineering, Product, and GTM teams across APAC and EMEA. Currently leads APAC Talent Acquisition at Okta. Partners with D4hire on APAC searches across Engineering, Product, and GTM functions — expanding the firm's reach beyond India and beyond engineering.

LinkedIn →

How we work together

You work with the founders. Every search.

Deepak runs the front of the firm — founder conversations, mandate scoping, executive search delivery, and India team setup engagements for global clients. Dilip runs the engine — sourcing, candidate engagement, screening, and close. Most searches involve both of us at the intake, and at least one of us at every shortlist review.

That's deliberate. Hiring is too consequential to be handed to a junior account manager. When you work with D4hire, you work with the founders — every search, every shortlist, every close.

Our values

Four things we hold ourselves to.

Calibration

Three real candidates beat thirty resumes. We hold ourselves to a quality bar before sending anyone to you.

Honesty

We will tell you if a role is hard, if your compensation is below market, or if we are not the right fit for a search. You will get our actual opinion, not a polite version of it.

Confidentiality

Executive searches and founding-team builds are sensitive. We treat your hiring plans the way we would want our own treated.

Long view

We would rather build a five-year partnership than win a one-off mandate. Every interaction is shaped by that.

Registered details
Registered address: Door No: 2435, Sreelakam, Ponoth Road, Kaloor, Kerala — 682017.

The next step

Let's talk.

Whether you are scoping a search or just want to compare notes on the market — book a 30-minute call with the founders.