I came across Equip.co and the first thing I noticed was the domain: Equip. One word. Clean, strong, and perfectly on-theme for a hiring product. Equip positions itself as an AI-native hiring platform that combines an applicant tracking system, skill assessments, and AI interviews into one system. The goal is straightforward: help teams evaluate candidates earlier and more consistently, instead of relying purely on resumes and unstructured interviews.
According to the company’s site, more than 150,000 candidates and 500+ teams have used the platform. Equip highlights logos including LG, Wipro, and Dunkin’ Donuts, and emphasizes a pay-as-you-go pricing model of $1 per candidate with no minimum payments. At the same time, its ATS offering includes separate pricing options, including per-user plans after an initial free tier. The broader positioning is clear: lower the barrier to structured hiring, especially for growing teams that do not want to commit to large subscription contracts upfront.
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Equip was founded in 2020 in Bengaluru, India under the legal name Socratease, Inc., with Jayanth Neelakanta as the founder. Before launching Equip, he built AutoProctor, an anti-cheating tool for online assessments, also under Socratease. The progression makes sense. If you are building online tests at scale, integrity and verification become part of the product whether you plan for it or not.
What interested me beyond the business model is the domain. Equip.co is short, memorable, and directly tied to the mission of equipping companies to hire better. It is not the .com, but it is clean, brandable, and easy to say out loud. For a hiring platform competing in a crowded assessment market, that matters.
I reached out to Jayanth because I wanted to understand how the name came together, how the domain was acquired, and whether building a global product on a .co instead of a .com has had any real impact.
Mike: Before Equip, you built AutoProctor and Socratease. What did you learn from those projects that shaped how you built Equip?
Jayanth: Socratease taught me the importance of distribution. It is the coolest and most unique product I have built, but I had no structured way to get new users. And though we got enough users to remain profitable for a few years, we couldn't scale. AutoProctor taught me the importance of a large TAM. We cracked distribution and had a million users within a year, fully organically! But, once COVID ended and schools returned to in-person learning, AutoProctor wasn't needed as much. With Equip, we deliberately went after a large market (hiring) and focused much more on marketing than just on building the product.
Mike: How did you land on the name Equip, and how did you acquire the Equip.co domain?
Jayanth: We equip recruiters with tools to find the right talent. We equip talent with tools to improve skills and make themselves attractive to recruiters. So, Equip felt quite natural. Also, it has a positive connotation, is two syllables, and is easy to pronounce and spell. We went through other options: Reckon (do you reckon this is a good candidate?), Parse (let's parse the candidate's CV) and so on. They didn't capture our vision and described how we were doing things rather than what we wanted to do. Equip felt like it could grow with us.
When I saw Equip.co was available and it wasn't that expensive (~$25K), I was delighted. We only had around ~$150K in the bank IIRC. And this was when our revenues were consistently dipping as schools churned off AutoProctor. However, the website we bought it from offered an EMI option, which was the main reason we could buy the domain. I told myself that if the business didn't turn around in a few months, we wouldn't lose as much. Thankfully, it did turn around!
Mike: Was Equip.com ever on the table, or was .co always the plan? How do you think about .co versus .com when you're building a global product?
Jayanth: We'd take the .com if it were priced sensibly. That's the honest answer. But it wasn't, so we didn't lose sleep over it. What matters is whether the domain is clean, memorable, and pronounceable. Equip.co checks all three. We've never had a customer hesitate because of the extension. At this point .co is well understood globally, especially in tech. Equip.com hasn't been a valid website for the past few years, I hope it stays that way!
Mike: Has the domain made a noticeable difference in how companies perceive you when you're competing against bigger names like HackerRank and TestGorilla?
Jayanth: It helps more than people expect. Equip is a dictionary word. No one asks how to spell it, no one mishears it on a call. In a category where competitors have names like "HackerRank" or made-up compounds, having a clean single word that describes exactly what you do is a quiet advantage. Also, as we launch more verticals, having a catch-all term like Equip helps.
Mike: Your pricing is $1 per candidate with no subscription. That's a pretty aggressive model. How does that work financially, and why did you go that route?
Jayanth: SaaS companies typically have great margins (at least pre-AI!). Most of our competitors charge more because their products aren't as self-serve. They require extensive account management, sales, and other support. We are a tiny team of five. All our leads are inbound, and the product is so easy to use that we don't even demo it to our customers. They just figure things out on their own. An inexpensive product means more people are willing to try it. Simple UX means you can convert and retain most of them. Hiring is a huge industry and we are willing to play the long game here.
Mike: You've got LG, Wipro, and Dunkin' Donuts highlighted on your site. How did you land those early enterprise customers as a small startup out of Bengaluru?
Jayanth: We didn't land them. They found us. Every one of those logos came through self-serve. They signed up, used the product, asked a question or two on live chat, and converted. We just ensure the product is worthwhile. People find this hard to believe, but that's exactly how it works when the product is genuinely useful and the pricing removes friction. PLG isn't a strategy we chose because it was trendy. It's what the product earned.
Mike: The hiring assessment space is crowded. What does Equip do that the bigger platforms don't, or won't?
Jayanth: We have already expanded beyond just assessments. We offer Resume Screening, AI Interviews and an ATS. We are also launching a Sourcing module where recruiters can directly find candidates, similar to LinkedIn. Fundamentally, we want to be the Amazon of Hiring. A recruiter should be able to upload a Job Description and immediately find a list of candidates filtered by salary and location, and sorted by skills and culture match. Assessments are a tool to evaluate skills, which is what we started with. But, we have gone, and will go, much deeper. We want to solve all aspects of hiring, whereas our competitors provide a point solution to one stage of hiring.
Mike: You built an AI-native ATS and you're giving it away for free. What's the strategy behind that?
Jayanth: The ATS is the workflow layer. It's where hiring actually happens. If we own that, every assessment, every AI interview, every screening decision runs through us. We're confident that once a team is running its pipeline inside Equip, the paid features aren't an upsell, they're the obvious next step.
Mike: Where is most of your traffic coming from right now? Are people finding you by typing Equip.co into a browser, through search, or something else entirely?
Jayanth: Google search remains our largest acquisition channel. But, LLM search is growing rapidly. Typical use-cases involve people looking for assessment tools, AI resume screening, or alternatives to established players. We're also seeing more traffic from people who asked an AI how to hire for a role, or streamline their hiring and Equip showed up.
Mike: For domain investors and founders reading this, what would you tell them about choosing a .co domain for a real business? What has it done for you and what has it cost you?
Jayanth: If the .com is available and affordable, take it. But I'd always take equip.co over getequip.com Several very famous startups use .sh, .app and so on! I am sure a clean, pronounceable, meaningful name on a .co will outperform a forgettable name on a .com every time. The domain is the beginning of your brand, not the whole story. Equip.co has taken us to 800+ customers across 81 countries. The extension never came up once.