India’s job market, always highly competitive, became a battleground after the pandemic. How could one ensure they stood out in a scenario like this? By relying on a partner who knows what it takes to succeed.
Noida-based firm Jobsgaar, launched in 2020, claims to be this partner.
“Jobsgaar is a career-tech venture that is disrupting decade-old marketplaces or search-and-browse models for recruiters and job seekers. With its omnichannel approach and proprietary technology, Jobsgaar helps employers find well-matched and verified talent in Tier II and III towns in less than two minutes. The brand enables access to various digital inclusions for recruiters and job seekers through its innovative tech solutions that include the world’s first chatbot at WhatsApp. Jobsgaar is also the first Indian startup to have an Indo-Israeli founding team,” explain Co-founders Atul Pratap Singh and Moshe Jacob in a chat with YourStory.
The journey so far
Atul is a marketing professional with a master’s degree in business management and over a decade of experience in building and managing global and Indian brands through marketing, distribution, and communication strategies.
His friend Moshe, from Tel Aviv in Israel, is a science graduate from Technion University and a serial entrepreneur. He is also an ex-IDF Captain with over 28 years of technological innovation and entrepreneurial experience.
The friends were aware that in both their countries, MSME clients faced tremendous troubles while looking to hire talent. This is why the duo decided to deep-dive into the problem and find a solution.
“Jobsgaar is the confluence of two words, Jobs and Rojgaar. The name popped up while I was discussing this problem with my wife Kanika, who is a marketing professional. We then came up with this name to attract an audience,” Atul says.
Moshe adds, “Driven by innovation and insight, we are the ‘First and Fastest’ career-tech venture for jobs in India. We envision bridging over 100 million jobs eekers with WalkToWork job opportunities in their native place. Keeping innovation at our core, in less than two years, we have applied for two patents and five trademarks.”
The team prides itself on creating solutions that work for all genders. For women, who comprise only 10 percent of the user base, building a career can be tough due to social responsibilities. Many times, women give up flourishing careers because they can’t find a local job or are asked to relocate.
The main problem of ‘locating’ a job in their native district is what Jobsgaar solves through its मेरा शहर, मेरा रोजगार programme. It has paid special attention to streamlining the processes for women so that they can also look for part-time job opportunities.
How it works
The co-founders highlight that Jobsgaar is a unique solution with multiple products. One can sign up for it through WhatsApp, the web platform, or an Android app.
The deep domain understanding of the founders has also resulted in a sign-up success rate of over 43 percent – a significant improvement on the world’s top 10 websites, which have a sign-up success rate of only 11.45 percent.
“Unlike other players, Jobsgaar isn’t a social networking platform or a marketplace for resumes and jobs. The startup is driven by technology innovation, and its proprietary matchmaking ensures that job seekers don’t waste time browsing for jobs or applying for irrelevant job opportunities.
“Simultaneously, the system ensures that employers/recruiters aren’t overburdened with the profiles of irrelevant candidates and are able to hire quickly. With speed, accuracy, and trust as the focal point, the technology ensures that the workforce can find a #WalktoWork opportunity,” Atul says.
Its main audience ranges between the ages of 18 and 45 years across genders and can be skilled, semi-skilled, or have no skills. The salary expectations range from Rs 5,000-40,000 per month.
“We are currently focusing on 15 districts of Uttar Pradesh. We’ll be expanding to other Hindi-speaking states soon. We are building a ‘Bharat-First’ solution with global standards. We also have plans to take this solution outside India in years to come,” Moshe says.
At present, Jobsgaar is preparing to deploy another unique solution — an employer dashboard currently in beta mode. This product is created for bulk and industry-level recruiters to hire candidates quickly. Besides, it is also working on some high-tech tools for job seekers to make wise and informed career decisions.
The Jobsgaar team prides itself on creating solutions that work for all genders.
Challenges and growth
Atul believes that Jobsgaar's target market of Tier II and III towns has very few players with a unique selling proposition. Technology has played a limited role in creating digital databases for employers and the workforce so far.
He shares that surprisingly, in an era where technology (including AI/ML) has become the most significant driver of innovation in decades, the recruitment space is still struggling with converting huge amounts of data into valuable information and uncovering insights and patterns undiscoverable by human operators and smart computers alone.
“Jobsgaar understands the meaning of the word ‘technology’ in its truest definition as ‘uncomplicating human tasks’. Thus, its biggest challenge was to differentiate and disrupt the market with a unique solution.
“With technology evolution and adoption in India, Jobsgaar created easy-to-use, omnichannel solutions with a deep tech product. The solution connects employers and employees in the shortest time possible, with an even distribution of opportunities,” he says.
Having started with an approximate investment of Rs 20-25 lakh, Jobsgaar claims to have witnessed tremendous growth. The startup claims to onboard one job seeker every two minutes from 15 districts of Uttar Pradesh.
Through its WhatsApp chatbot, the platform has recorded over 70,000 conversations with over 75 percent of chatbot automation rate. After the launch of its Android app, Jobsgaar recorded over 12,000 app downloads and 5,400 jobs from one city in just 15 days.
The platform offers over 17,000 jobs with over 1,82,000 job seekers from a handful of districts in Uttar Pradesh. With its Android app launched publicly, the brand estimates onboarding over a million job seekers in the next couple of months.
Besides the big players such as Naukri and Monster, Jobsgaar competes with startups like Apna, Hirect, LokalPe, Pragati Jobs, and others.
Jobsgaar is backed by a few prominent funds and marquee angel investors, including SucSeed Indovation, Blume, Karekeba Ventures, and Blacksoil.
The angels include Rohit Chanana, Ex-Hero Corporate; Poonam Kaul, Ex- Marketing head, Apple; Jasminder Singh Gulati, Co-founder of Now Floats, acquired by Jio; Dipak Gupta, joint MD, Kotak Bank; Shanti Ekambaram, Group President, Kotak Bank; Jaimin Bhatt, CFO, Kotak Bank; and Priyaranjan Jha, Head Global Operations, PepsiCo.
Moshe ends the conversation by highlighting, “While the Jobsgaar solution works on complicated proprietary technology, the front end remains very simple, resulting in a high signup success rate. Also, the brand chose a diverse market like Uttar Pradesh for the pilot run. Despite apprehensions of job availability in Tier II and III towns of this state, the startup recently listed over 5,400 jobs from just one district in less than 15 days!”
Edited by Teja Lele Desai