Mumbai: Vahan, an AI-enabled livelihood platform, today announced that it has reached a significant milestone of providing employment opportunities to over 1 lakh blue-collared professionals through its WhatsApp API enabled chatbot called Mitra. With an increase of 400% since 2020, these workers have been placed in several blue/grey-collared jobs in sectors such as logistics, delivery, and BPOs.
Vahan currently has 5 million users on its platform and is adding 2.5 lakh people every month. Given the simplicity and ease of use of the WhatsApp API, the digital startup is placing 5000 people every month and is growing at the rate of 25% per month. Mitra is emerging as India’s employment exchange 2.0 for over 300 million blue-collar workers in the country.
To apply, job seekers need to simply text “Hi” to Vahan’s WhatsApp-enabled chatbot ‘Mitra’, answer a few questions, and expect to be placed in a job within 3 days. Being available on WhatsApp has helped the company reduce the barrier to entry while maximizing user adoption and engagement.
Talking about the benefits of Vahan, Asha, a job seeker, said, “My husband and I both lost our jobs during the pandemic and were struggling to make ends meet. This is when someone advised me to reach out to ‘Mitra’ who found me a job in just one day. ‘Mitra’ is a godsend for people like us who struggle to find jobs matching their skills and often get harassed by middlemen. It is unbelievable that I can find jobs on WhatsApp itself!”
According to Madhav Krishna, Founder and CEO, Vahan, “The blue-collar segment is an underserved market in India despite constituting the bulk of the workforce. Our partnership with WhatsApp allows us to seamlessly connect employers and job seekers thereby facilitating better livelihoods and financial inclusion especially for underprivileged households.”
Vahan is leveraging the power of WhatsApp, AI and machine learning to bring a great value proposition to both recruiters and job seekers in this underserved blue-collar market. “We are set to become the country’s largest blue-collar recruiter in the next 18 months”, Madhav Krishna further added.
“Vahan has grown into a key contributor and driver of growth in the gig workforce. We are excited that WhatsApp continues to bring value to such innovative models of growth and helps accelerate financial and digital inclusion among blue-collar workforce in India,” added Abhijit Bose, Head of WhatsApp, India.
Specializing in high volume recruitment of delivery personnel for companies in the e-commerce and food delivery space, Vahan played an essential role in securing jobs for unemployed executives during the pandemic with more than 20,000 people relying on Vahan to look for a job on WhatsApp every day.
