Babajob: Soon will Launch 'Chatbot' App for Better Job Recommendations & Match

BWDisrupt interacted with Sean Blagsvedt, CEO of Babajob, founded the organization in 2007

The idea was inspired by Duke University and World Bank research which showed that the primary path out of poverty is through income diversification i.e. changing jobs. Vir Kashyap, COO of Babajob, moved to India 8 years ago and co-founded the company with Sean.

Vir Kashyap
Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Co-founder, Babajob

Vir Kashyap is Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder at babajob.com, India’s largest livelihood marketplace, facilitating jobs for the next billion. At present, Babajob has about seven million job seekers and over 400,000 employers. Vir’s responsibility is to give a strategic direction to the company, manage all strategic partnerships, and own finance operations for the company. Previously, Vir was a partner at Indavest, a venture capital and incubation firm focusing on early‐stage consumer investments in India based out of Bangalore. Prior to that, he was a member of the Business Development team at Vega Asset Management. Based in Madrid, he evaluated fund managers for investment and inclusion on the fund platform and managed relationships with the fund's investor base.

He started his career at Morgan Stanley in New York where he assisted the firm’s Alternative Asset Managemen clients to raise capital from a global base of investors. His experience also includes Epinions.com (now part of eBay) where he helped launch the enterprise-computing vertical. He has also co-founded the Bangalore Social Enterprise Group, and is an active member in the startup ecosystem.Vir secured a Bachelors of Arts in Economics and Religion from Bowdoin College (Brunswick, Maine). He is an avid traveler having visited all 6 continents.

Babajob was found with an aim to provide the next billion of our society access to better employment opportunities – regardless of people’s literacy level, income level, or computer skills. The platform enables numerous households and companies to shape and modernize their workforce, ultimately impacting the Indian economy. We believe, and take pride, in the fact that we are solving one of the biggest challenges our country faces today i.e. unemployment. Babajob’s team is hustling, and constantly working hard to ultimately offer ‘Better jobs for everyone.’

Sean Blagsvedt
Founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Babajob
Sean Blagsvedt is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder at babajob.com, India’s largest livelihood marketplace, facilitating jobs for the next billion. At
present, Babajob has about seven million job seekers and over 400,000
employers.

Before starting babajob.com, Sean worked for nine years at Microsoft as part of their User Interface team for Office & Windows. He helped the company establish Microsoft Research India in 2004. Prior to working
with Microsoft, Sean worked at the White House with the Internet Policy Czar,
Ira Magaziner. Sean has secured a dual Bachelor degree in Computer Science and Public Policy from Brown University (1998). He has also received the Namma Bengaluru Award for Best Foreign Resident in 2014. He is also a
successful TED Fellow.

One of our greatest innovations which has helped us work more efficiently and reach a larger audience of low-income job seekers is our Interactive Voice Response system (IVR). Our IVR is available in multiple regional languages and has given over 607,867 offline job seekers access to our services. By operating purely through mobile phones, this system allows job seekers to register on Babajob, create a profile, find and apply to relevant jobs regardless of the jobseekers internet connectivity or literacy.

The IVR is available for anyone across India who has access to a mobile phone and is completely free to use - the potential job seekers simply need to give a missed call on 0-888-000-444 - and we take it forward from there! Our constant work on technology interplay across different mediums will help us achieve our ultimate goal of improving livelihoods for low-income job seekers in India.

Babajob basically works on a freemium model for households and SMEs, wherein we offer them our Rapid Hire/ Rapid Hire Plus Plan. Under the Rapid Hire Plus plan the employers can call up to 100 applicants, and feature at the top of job listings. 70% of our paid employers hire within a week of posting a job on Babajob. Besides that, we partner with large enterprises, which work on customized plans.

The company has also experimented with some limited marketing campaigns dedicated to the IVR number in the past. But, the team at Babajob is a firm believer in word-of-mouth promotion. Let the product speak for itself and you will automatically have users - that is exactly what has happened with us! Jobseekers have found our service and shared it with other people they know who are also looking for work.

We currently have about 7 million registered job seekers, who submit over 4, 50,000 applications per month for jobs across India. Employers have posted over 1.1 million job opportunities ranging across 26 different categories with an average salary posted on Babajob of approximately Rs.10,850.

Being a player in the technology led recruitment ecosystem, we have recognized that one of the biggest challenges a marketplace faces is to maintain a balance between demand and supply. A marketplace can only grow if we have a balance between the number of job opportunities and the number of jobseekers and vice-versa. Following on the same line, shortage of skilled workers is another challenge recruitment companies face today. Today’s employer is interested to hire a skilled employee who can fulfil his/her personal demands.

E.g. A need by an employer for a cook willing to work in a particular locality and is skilled enough to cook Japanese food. The increase in customized demands for each of the employee has impacted the industry, and various players have witnessed a paradigm shift in demand-supply. Babajob has recently fulfilled a query for a dog walker available in Indiranagar, Bangalore. That’s how exciting things sometimes get! Our team is passionate about recruitment for entry level/blue collar employees, but we have also seen a visible growth in the number of players functioning in this ecosystem.

We see huge potential in this space as the number of jobs, number of jobseekers, average salaries, and number of people getting hired each second is on a constant rise. A recent Jobs & Salaries Primer report by TeamLease captured that the hike of average salaries in the current fiscal year 2016-17 will be ranging between 11-13% across industries and functions. According to the report blue collar domain saw a steep rise for select profiles, with employers wanting to reward and retain specialized skills.

Hospitality (gym instructor, housekeeping) are cases where blue collar job profiles have garnered lofty salary increments this year. Improved technology, penetration of smartphones, and easy access to internet have acted like a catalyst in the growth of the overall organized blue collar job market.

Babajob will continue to grow by constantly improving and innovating technology over the coming months. We aim to offer our customer a flawless user experience, even with limited internet access. We will be soon launching a chatbot, a better app for jobseekers as well as employers, and focus deeply on improving the job recommendation function i.e. to identify which applicant is suitable for which job, all led by technology. We have also lay our priority to increase efficiency for the employers by offering better matches.