For many students stepping into the job market, the first hurdle isn’t interviews; it’s the application process itself.
This was exactly the problem Agnay Srivastava and Pulkit Gupta ran into while applying for internships as engineering students at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Between tailoring resumes, writing cover letters, and filling out repetitive forms, the process became a bottleneck.
“The tools available were either not transparent about how they worked, or not affordable for students like us,” says Srivastava.
In 2025, that friction led the duo to build Tsenta, an AI-powered job application platform. It is designed to automate the most time-consuming parts of job hunting while still keeping applications personalised.
CEO Srivastava and CTO Gupta describe Tsenta as a middle ground between existing tools.
“Chrome extensions can only fill one form at a time, and need the user to drive the process manually. Cloud-based appliers automate more, but are expensive,” says Srivastava.
Tsenta sits between the two—tailoring resumes and cover letters and applying to roughly 70% of roles at Fortune 500 companies in under two minutes, at a price point accessible to students.
Unlike platforms that charge around $20 for 80 applications, Tsenta offers 600 applications at the same price, which the founders believe is enough volume to meaningfully improve a candidate’s chances of landing interviews.
The Indianapolis-based startup recently received $500,000 in backing from Y Combinator. In September 2025, the eight-member team took part in Georgia Tech’s annual hackathon, where they were the only team to win across two separate tracks.
“One of those tracks let us choose our prize, either interviews with YC companies or a referral to YC itself. We chose the referral, applied in November, and were accepted in December,” says Srivastava, adding that prior to this, the duo had only invested about $100 on building and deploying the app.
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The nature of the job market—and where AI fits in
With AI-powered job application tools like LazyApply and Sonara entering the market, applicant tracking systems have become more sophisticated at identifying AI-generated resumes.
Srivastava says Tsenta is designed to work around this shift by avoiding over-automation. Instead of rewriting resumes wholesale, the platform tailors them only as much as a specific role needs.
“Our priority is keeping the candidate's language, experience, and skill set true to who they actually are. The result is a resume that is well matched to the job and still authentically the candidate's own,” he says.
The founder says the application process is fairly simple. A candidate uploads their resume, the team asks about five questions, and uses these answers to show relevant jobs. Once they click ‘apply’ on a job, Tsenta automatically tailors their profile, and applies to these jobs.
He adds that the job application process itself has become increasingly inefficient on both sides: time consuming for candidates and often repetitive for employers reviewing applications.
“Further down the line, we have discussed ways Tsenta could play a broader role across the hiring process, but right now our focus is on distribution and serving job seekers,” he says.
Despite that, Srivastava believes the structural inefficiencies in hiring are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
One of their users, Soham Gupta, believes Tsenta is the best among the existing job application platforms. “I landed more than 25 interviews in three weeks. There was complete personalisation and transparency over what I submitted,” he says.
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Funding and the future
While Tsenta primarily serves US-based customers, the startup also supports job seekers in India. The company is now working on expanding its coverage of Indian employers and improving the applicant tracking platforms used in India to match its US capabilities.
With the recent funding from Y Combinator, the startup plans to scale the consumer product and widen adoption so that job seekers no longer need to manually apply to roles one by one.
Tsenta says it has crossed 9,000 customers so far, with user growth doubling month on month.
“Our revenue has also seen a significant jump. It grew 5X in the last month alone. Right now, our focus is on scaling adoption, strengthening the product, and building long-term value,” says Srivastava.
Edited by Swetha Kannan
Original Article
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