Saksham Sandhu

Early Influences

For many school-goers, a programming textbook is just another subject. For Saksham Sandhu, Sumita Arora's computer science book lit the spark that became a full-blown passion for coding. While still in high school, he marvelled at how a few lines of code could make a computer do his bidding.

That excitement soon converged with an entrepreneurial itch after he devoured Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

“Reading about Jobs' journey made me realise I didn't just want to write code — I wanted to build things that could change lives.”

His early immersion in programming paid off when he earned admission to Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) — now Delhi Technological University (DTU). The seeds of curiosity he carried into campus would, within a few years, drive him to disrupt an entire industry.

Campus Innovator

At DTU, Saksham channelled his enthusiasm into real-world projects. His first Android app — built in the dorm — sparked a realisation: innovation isn't a solo game. He needed a PHP developer for the backend, but the talent was scattered across hostels with no easy way to find each other.

So he founded Software Developers DTU (SDDTU), a campus society where budding coders could learn and collaborate. As SDDTU's reputation grew, it expanded into IOSD — the International Organisation of Software Developers — stretching across 22 engineering colleges in India.

“IOSD was our attempt to unite students who wanted to learn by doing, not just reading. Before we knew it, hundreds of us were building projects and running workshops in colleges nationwide.”

That momentum culminated in HackDTU — now celebrated as North India's largest hackathon. The 24- to 48-hour marathons became a magnet for young developers, and honed Saksham's leadership skills as he learned to orchestrate massive events and nurture a thriving tech community.

Campus innovation didn't stop at hackathons. Through IOSD, Saksham worked with Delhi Police to deploy an Autonomous Surveillance Drone, and with Arunachal Pradesh Police on Anubhuti — an initiative to strengthen public-feedback mechanisms through QR codes and digital tools. Collaborating with Deputy Commissioner of Police Prashant Priya Gautam gave him first-hand insight into how technology can improve governance and public services.

PlacementSaga: The Hiring Insight

Even as a student, Saksham was fascinated by the hiring process. Why were some candidates acing interviews while others, equally talented, fell short? That question birthed PlacementSaga, a platform where aspiring developers could sharpen their data-structures and algorithms (DSA) skills through curated tests and video solutions.

PlacementSaga gained real traction with student developers preparing for placements, and the deeper Saksham went into the problem, the clearer the bigger opportunity became: the inefficiencies sat inside the hiring process itself. Helping candidates prepare was valuable, but rebuilding how companies actually source, screen and interview those candidates was the bolder bet — and the one that would become GoodSpace.

GoodSpace.ai: Revolutionising Hiring Through AI

Traditional recruitment was painstakingly slow: weeks or months to shortlist candidates, repetitive screening calls, endless scheduling loops. Determined to fix it, Saksham co-founded GoodSpace.ai with Vinay Pasricha, an industry veteran with decades of experience in hiring and talent acquisition.

GoodSpace sources, shortlists and interviews candidates autonomously — often within an hour. The AI interviewer supports 55+ major spoken languages, evaluates both technical and soft skills in real time, and has conducted 25,000+ AI interviews to date. The platform has onboarded over 1 million job seekers.

“We built a virtual AI recruiter that can evaluate a candidate's technical and soft skills in real-time. We're talking near-human-like conversations, only faster and bias-free.”

The mission to make hiring 10× faster has earned recognition from Microsoft, which named GoodSpace a first mover in AI-powered hiring across South Asia. The first GoodSpace product — the AI Recruiter — launched in 2021, followed by the Smart ATS in 2022 and the AI Interview system in 2023. By 2024, GoodSpace had scaled its enterprise platform with intelligent candidate matching that goes well beyond keyword search, and the team is now building toward SmartHire — an autonomous recruitment system that handles end-to-end hiring from sourcing through onboarding.

The Road Ahead: Toward AGI and Beyond

Despite GoodSpace's success, Saksham insists he's just getting started. He envisions a future where Artificial General Intelligence reshapes many sectors — from education to healthcare — and sees GoodSpace.ai as one application layer of AI among countless others crying out for automation and intelligence.

If more capital flows into bold ideas, Saksham believes Indian founders can push the boundaries even further — possibly creating the building blocks for AGI in the process.

Further reading: Reshaping hiring with AI: the entrepreneurial journey of Saksham Sandhu — ET CIO