The job candidate ratio in India has always been unpredictable and unbalanced. India is the largest when it comes to the blue-grey collar jobs, and part of the reason is the increasing usage of smartphones and internet accessibility. Riding this wave is WorkIndia, a fully-automated technology platform that leverages deep tech, geo-tagging and dynamic algorithm based hiring with the sole purpose of making the human intervention between candidates and recruiters zero.
WorkIndia has been in the industry for five years now. In 2015, they started with a semi-automated product, where the tele callers handled the candidates daily. Soon they realised if they needed to reach their vision of “providing meaningful livelihoods to 120 Cr blue-collar individuals of the planet’ they would have to move to something beyond the manual telephonic calls.
And, in the wake of that, WorkIndia created an app to improve their services by leveraging deep technology, geo-tagging and dynamic algorithms. Right now, WorkIndia has more than 15 million candidates on their app and over 3.5 million monthly active users. For this week’s Deep Dive column, we got in touch with Kunal Patil, Co-Founder of WorkIndia to discuss their other products and the use of AI/ML in their work process.
WorkIndia’s Other Products & The TechStack
WorkIndia currently has two lines of products, one is for employers, and the other one is for the candidates seeking the job. For candidates, the product offers a systematic approach to get a job, eliminate third parties and referrals, and the candidate can directly call the employer. For employers, the app provides a space to post the jobs and only candidates related to that job posting will be able to apply for it. The employer generally gets a call from the relevant candidate within 24 hours.
As for the TechStack, WorkIndia says that its current tech team of 11 members don’t depend on a fixed technology stack, which, in turn, gives them flexibility with their tech. But for their current tech stack, they are using Python, Django framework, Node.js and React.js for different projects.
For data storage, they use MySQL, Athena, Elasticsearch, Redshift, MongoDB, Neo4j and Redis for caching. Everything is hosted on AWS, and for faster performance, WorkIndia uses Cloudfront and Load Balancer.
Use of AI and ML
WorkIndia believes that along with more blue-collar workers adapting to the internet, one of the biggest reasons for their growth has been the adoption of AI and ML into their application. With 125 million user events captured every month and dynamic algorithms already in place, WorkIndia believes that they are one of the few Indian startups who are ready for complete AI adoption.
WorkIndia uses geo-tagged dynamic algorithm-based automated hiring where the entire transaction terminates on the platform. WorkIndia utilises ML capabilities and training models to improve the relevancy algorithm. They have a massive amount of high-quality, real-world data available in real-time, which is advantageous when it comes to utilising AI and ML.
Hiring Talents & Crunching Gap
When it comes to hiring for their own company, WorkIndia looks for two things in particular; innovation and excitement of becoming a global leader in the blue-collar segment.
When it comes to hiring for data science, their ideal candidate should have in-depth knowledge of data science concepts and should know how to read data and draw insights from it. They realise that a clear mindset and domain knowledge are codependent, so when it comes to tackling the talent gap, they believe in keeping a hard-working team at work and keep it tight.
They believe that the resource crunch can be handled by extra hours of effort by the entire team rather than hiring in panic and affecting the whole culture of the office. One ability that the startup has mentioned that it will never compromise on is the candidate’s empathy towards the user, as this will help them satisfy the customers and also create a better service and culture in the company.
Customer Trust And Competition
The most crucial factor for WorkIndia is its users, and indeed, every employee in the startup is dedicated towards a product for the customers to simplify their hiring process. They have specific sessions arranged by team members to understand their users and plan the next steps according to the user/customer. Each review is taken seriously, and the employees are empathetic towards the customer.
The vision is to provide meaningful employment to every blue-collar individual on this planet. This is a dream for us. We work for them, and we thrive for this.
– Kunal Patil, Co-Founder, WorkIndia
As for what sets them apart — they believe that their 100% automated product which is designed for hassle-free hiring is their main asset along with their vision. WorkIndia is a core technology company that isn’t like the other ‘tech-enabled’ startups in e-commerce, food delivery etc. WorkIndia is the only online recruiting company in India and on a global scale, where the entire transaction terminates on the technology.
The Future Roadmap
WorkIndia has seen an increase in job seekers user base every day, which is around 50k per day. They want to keep growing and gearing up to make their products for tier 2 and tier 3 cities to provide more liquidity in those cities. They will also be adding multiple languages and preferences to their product. Their ultimate goal is to get the number 0.3 million job posting per month to 1 million job posting per month by the first quarter of 2021.
