Hunarr: Addresses the Skill Gap and Employability Among Job Seekers

BWDisrupt interacted with Dinesh Goel, Co-Founder & CEO, Hunarr.co.in to know how the Edutech company has been fairing since its inception.

Hunarr is a stand-alone training product of Aasaanjobs, an online recruitment and staffing company for entry level jobs. The prevailing skill gap between the current level of employment and the employability of job seekers pushed the founders of Aasaanjobs to come up with a solution that took the shape of an online platform to help job seekers find the right training providers and training institutes. Thus the innovative training startup Hunarr was launched in October 2015 in Mumbai.

The innovative training startup connecting training seekers to training providers-Hunarr, was launched in October 2015 in Mumbai.The startup was founded by Dinesh Goel, Gaurav Toshniwal and Kunal Jadhav.

How Hunarr was started?
The story behind the inception of Hunarr is rooted in reality. Dinesh Goel, while running Aasaanjobs, which ventures into recruitment space for entry level workforce, realized that almost 70% work force looking for jobs is not skilled to get a job. They lack one or the other essential skill in finding a fulfilling job. This prompted him to launch Hunarr for entry level job seekers, which connects them to training providers, thereby helping them to add more value to their current skill sets and find a promising career.

Please share details on Unique key feature and services of Hunarr? How is it diff. from existing ones?
Hunarr as opposed to the existing players in the same space focuses on helping course seekers find the best suitable course for them, specifically by linking training to recruitment. Thereby, on Hunarr, one can find industry relevant professional training courses, which will enable them to get placed post completing the training. There are several features, like enabling course search by job roles, finding institutes that give job assistance and guarantee, and extensive details on the course, like skills it teaches, certifications, course timings and associated job roles to name a few. All the contemporary model have this feature missing in them.

Please share the Funding status?
In the seed round, 1.5 million USD was raised by Aasaanjobs, spearheaded by Inventus and IDG, while in the series A round 5 million USD was raised by Aasaanjobs. Since Hunarr is a stand alone product of Aasaanjobs, it was envisioned that job seekers coming to the Aasaanjobs website but not able to get a job due to lack of skills would get upskilled through Hunarr, giving birth to the latter.

What is the monetization model of Hunarr?
Hunarr charges training institutes for providing them genuine and quality leads, who are looking for counseling and training courses. Hunarr creates microsite for these training institutes, which extensively increases their online presence, and giving them benefits of SEO and increased revenue. Hunarr is free for the training seekers.

Please share the Traction details received so far on Hunarr.
Hunarr has made a remarkable feat in a very small time. As of now, 960 training institutes across 85 cities have listed more than 6,500 courses on Hunarr, and are able to reach more than 7,00,000 candidates who need training as per their desired career paths.

The inception of Hunarr was followed by a few challenges. The biggest of all initial challenges was to make job seekers understand where they lagged behind, why they needed to get trained for career development, and how it could help them. The job seekers were on the hunt for better opportunities without understanding that they required training to have the right skill to be readily employable. How to keep the website navigable through increasing volumes of content has been another challenge to the founders of Hunarr.

Please share details on marketing plans, challenges faced by the startup?
Hunarr is on a mission to address skill deficiencies and bridge the skill gap not only in one industry but all industries across the country. We strive to transform lives by reaching out to job seekers who are lagging behind and groping in the dark unknowingly. Hunarr is supported and funded by Aasaanjobs. They raised 1.5 million USD in a seed funding round and 5 million USD in the series A round. There is an extensive market opportunity as there is an evident and increasing skill gap in the country. The not-so-effective Skill India initiative of the government of India has further kicked in the need of start-ups like Hunarr.

What are your the future plans?
Hunarr shall seek to address the skill gap in the entire country so that job seekers are not limited by availability of certain industries and courses nearby and can hope to gain skills and transform their lives from anywhere in this country.