The one-paragraph answer
If you're already running payroll + attendance + leave on Keka, Keka Hire is the obvious add-on. One bill, one vendor, one login — and as of October 2026 its hiring page also lists an AI-led screening interview with transcripts and scores, not just basic ATS + structured workflow.
If your problem is hiring quality, not HRMS, Lucida. We don't do payroll, attendance, leave, performance, or expense — and we never will. We do one thing: AI scoring with cited evidence, candidate feedback for every applicant, and a calibration loop that gets sharper with every hire.
Feature comparison
| Lucida | Keka Hire | |
|---|---|---|
| Price (entry) | ₹2,499 / month, single admin | Not published — free trial or demo |
| HRMS bundle (payroll · attendance · leave · perf) | No, never will | Yes, the actual reason to use Keka |
| AI scoring with cited evidence | Per dimension, every candidate | CV–JD match score + AI interview scores; quote-level citation not publicly claimed |
| AI-led screening interview (transcripts + scores) | Built, held back for compliance review — not public yet | Listed under Keka AI · plan and price not published |
| JD clarification pre-pass | Asks before drafting | Not present |
| Candidate feedback report | Automatic, every applicant | Manual / templated |
| Outcome → rubric calibration | 90-day survey · /admin/insights | Tracks 90-day performance + early attrition; no rubric feedback claimed |
| Audit trail (DPDPA / AEDT / EU AI Act) | Per-row, every score, Save-as-PDF | HRMS-grade compliance, not AI-decision-specific |
| India-native | DPDPA-by-default · GST invoice · Tier-2/3 channels | India-founded, strong on Indian compliance |
| Multi-user / pipeline stages | Single admin, no stages beyond shortlist | Full pipeline + recruiter collaboration |
| Best fit | Founder screening candidates, wants better hires | 20-200 person team wanting one HRMS for everything |
Where Keka wins (and we mean it)
- The HRMS bundle economics. If you need payroll + attendance + leave + performance, running them in separate tools means more bills, more logins and more reconciling than one suite. Hard to compete with vertical integration.
- Pipeline + recruiter collaboration. If multiple people need to comment on candidates, move them through stages, assign owners — Keka has the workflow. Lucida is single-admin.
- Already in your stack. Switching cost is real. If Keka HRMS is running, Keka Hire is the path of least resistance.
- AI screening interview, on their page today. Keka's hiring page describes a structured AI-led screening interview with transcripts and scores. Lucida built the equivalent (anchored scoring, bounded follow-ups) and is holding it back for a compliance review before it ships — Keka got there first.
Where Lucida wins
- Hiring is the product, not a module. Lucida exists for one thing: making the hire-no-hire decision better. Every line of code is in service of that. Keka Hire is one tab in a sprawling HRMS — gets attention proportional to how it ranks against payroll bugs.
- Cited-evidence scoring. Every score in Lucida quotes the résumé or interview answer that produced it. Keka's public pages describe scores and transcripts but don't claim each score is tied to a quote — you trust the rank or you don't.
- The candidate-feedback report. Every applicant — even rejected — gets a private URL with their score breakdown. Keka does not write these; a personalised report for every applicant only works when AI is doing the writing, not a human recruiter.
- The calibration loop. Over time, Lucida tells you "your Mentorship dimension didn't predict hires; consider reweighting". Keka tracks funnel conversion and hiring quality (offer acceptance, 90-day performance, early attrition); Lucida goes one step further and shows which of your own rubric dimensions actually predicted those outcomes.
The pragmatic move
Use both. Run Keka for HRMS — payroll, attendance, leave, performance reviews. Use Lucida for the scoring + feedback layer Keka Hire isn't built for. Lucida's bulk-paste import handles résumés from Keka exports; the embed widget runs on your existing Keka careers page if you have one.
Most of our customers who came from Keka kept Keka for HR and added Lucida for scoring. Different jobs, different products. We didn't try to compete with the bundle.