India’s economic engine today relies heavily on its blue and grey collar workers. Nearly 300 million power the country’s shops, warehouses, factories, delivery networks, security services, and small enterprises. However, the blue-collar workforce is trapped in a pre-digital hiring crisis with fragmented referrals, fake jobs, and predatory brokers eroding trust at every turn. All of this is also compounded by the ~50-55% attrition rate in this sector.
“I used to wait days, going place to place, just to find out if there was any work. Through WorkIndia, I have come across three opportunities in a quick span of time.” – Sahil Rajendra Manwar (Nahegoan)
We saw this as a large complex social problem and were on the lookout for tech driven models that could potentially solve for this.
The traditional platforms treated blue-collar needs as an afterthought, with complex interfaces and week-long hiring cycles that ignore low digital literacy across India’s regional and linguistic diversity. No one was building with the worker at the heart.
When we first met Nilesh Dungarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of WorkIndia, it became immediately clear that he and his team were tackling one of India’s most persistent and under-addressed market failures: access to dignified, trustworthy, and timely employment for blue-collar workers, while simultaneously solving a critical pain point for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Their traction with 159 million interviews across 630 cities in the past year alone was genuinely exciting; this was the tech-native fix for India’s workforce formalization.
The “Aha” Moment: A Candidate-First Approach
Diving into their platform, the simplicity was refreshing. Other apps force four-step employer postings and yet deliver suspect leads; WorkIndia boils it to one step, landing jobs for candidates in 12-24 hours. Their proprietary tech stack, AI profanity filters, NLP for vulgar content, graph-based broker detection wipes out fakes at source, hence building trust.
Furthermore, at WorkIndia we witnessed network effects kick in with 35 million registered candidates (9 million active, 35% women), 3 million monthly active users, and 3.4 million employers from kirana stores to Tata and Swiggy to name a few.
“We used to spend days and multiple local contacts to hire one reliable person. With WorkIndia, we typically close positions within 2-3 days, we have already hired more than 50 people.” – Ashok Kumar, S4S Facilities Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad
This isn’t just scale; it’s an ecosystem where more verified jobs draw more workers, slashing acquisition costs over time and creating a win- win scenario for all involved. For low-income households, it’s dignified employment, upskilling via in-app learning sections, visibility into earnings and job proximity and for employers it is ease of hiring.
Impact at The Grassroot Level
At the ground level, WorkIndia is enabling stable livelihoods and workforce mobility. What impressed us most was the scale at which WorkIndia was operating. Blue-collar hiring powers 73 million small and medium businesses struggling with high-touch recruitment amid attrition crises. WorkIndia flips this: employers get qualified calls within hours, reducing time-to-hire from days to under a day. We’ve modelled the ripple effects – formalization of jobs stabilizing incomes, curbing fake job postings and boosting SMB productivity in retail, delivery, security, telecalling and other related industries.
Along with this, WorkIndia’s ~600-person sales team (many low-skilled hires themselves) creates scalable employment internally, with women at 29% of staff.
From an impact lens, WorkIndia meets the 2X Criteria under Consumption, with strong inclusion metrics across income segments, gender participation, and first-time workers.
At Aavishkaar, we back bets on India’s demographic dividend and WorkIndia proves tech with empathy can formalize it profitably.
We are excited to partner with WorkIndia as it reshapes how hiring happens in new-age India. And in doing so, creates national scale impact across livelihoods, businesses, and communities.
For more information, please write to impactandesg@aavishkaar.in
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