Finding a job is hard but in India, BabaJob is making the process a bit easier for job seekers at the bottom of the pyramid.
Started in Bangalore in March of 2007, BabaJob is a matching resource for blue-collar workers looking for jobs. Sean Blagsvedt, co-founder of BabaJob, explains that the inspiration came from Anirudh Krishna’s research paper “Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why?” Blagsvedt learned that most people moved out of poverty through job diversification. However, he noticed that most job-finding resources in India were designed for people seeking white collar jobs. Blue-collar workers and those at the bottom of the economic pyramid had to rely on word of mouth or luck in order to find the jobs that could help them move out of poverty. He decided to create a resource that would allow workers in India to find jobs in their fields and born was Babajob.
Currently, BabaJob is both a website and a mobile service. Job seekers can sign up online or via mobile to receive updates when a job meeting their requirements comes available (job seekers enter their location, type of work they are seeking, and their desired salary in order to narrow the result to relevant matches). Subscribers over USSD services pay one rupee per day to receive messages, but can respond for free. Users can also receive messages over SMS, or access the website over the mobile web. Employers can post their jobs for free, but must pay in order to get contact information for potential employees. Side note: USSD is a capability of all GSM phones, and associated with real-time or instant messaging type phone services. Response times for interactive USSD-based services are generally quicker than those used for SMS.
Challenges and Evolution
Blagsvedt moved to India six years ago to work at Microsoft India's research lab. He said that about 40% of the work at Microsoft dealt with how to create technology that’s relevant to the base of the pyramid, so he was already familiar with creating technology that was accessible to a large number of users.
BabaJob was originally created along with a social networking site called BabaLife. BabaLife’s goal was to facilitate conections between job seekers. BabaLife was based on the idea that people are more likely to hire someone with whom they have a connection and to help people find more opportunities.
However, as the company grew, Blagsvedt found that BabaJob functioned fine without BabaLife. They refocused on BabaJob as a more independent site. Says Blagsvet,”
We probably overestimated the value originally of the social networking pieces, and underestimated the value of the market for jobs. […] After we’d been up for a year and a half, and we looked at how are people actually getting hired, they were usually getting hired not because of the social networking connection but because there was something about the factors between the job seeker and the employer that matched up [such as salary, job proximity, similar language]
Babajob has also changed its target employers. The site originally focused primarily on domestic workers: cooks, maids, etc who would work in private homes. As the company expanded outside of Bangalore to run India-wide, however, it started focuding more on corporate, entry-level work like call center jobs, or service jobs in retail shops. Says Vir Kashyap, COO of BabaJob, “It’s easier to hire someone into the work space than the home space,” so as the company expanded nationally it started working more with corporate partners.
Another way the company has changed significantly from its original incarnation is through greater accessibility through mobiles. The original BabaJob/BabaLife set-up relied heavily on computer usage in order to access the site. Acknowledging that many poorer users would not be have access to the Internet, they set up a "mentor" program in which middlemen would be paid for connecting job seekers (who didn't have regular access to computers) with employers. However, by fully embracing mobile, BabaJob has largely dropped the mentor program as people can now receive job news each day over their phones.
How BabaJob Grew
As the site has scaled up across India, the company has relied heavily on its partnerships with telecommunications companies. “When we’ve expanded to other parts of the country, it’s because we are doing it in conjunction with these telephone companies. And people are largely interacting with us not through the website but through mobile channels – SMS, or mobile web, or a call center,” says Blagsvedt.
The first telecom to reach out to BabaJob was AirTel. AirTel already had a job help network, but featured no blue collar jobs. As mobile phone ownership and usage penetrates into lower income levels grew, the company wanted to find a way to target jobs at the new demographics. A partnership with BabaJob provided Airtel with the sort of jobs it was looking to offer its mobile subscribers. BabaJob has continued to partner with other telecommunications companies and handset providers. According to Kashyap, the partnerships with India’s telecommunications companies have given the company a much broader reach, and a way to rapidly expand by reaching mobile users directly.
Kashyap added that because BabaJob is focused on reaching the greatest number of job seekers, they have worked to make the company easily reachable – users can sign up either online, or over mobiles, or in person in the Bangalore offices. The group plans to expand into offering voice services in the next few months so that semi- and illiterate job seekers can use the service through their mobiles as well.
The company now has roughly 75% of its visitors accessing their information over mobiles, and 25% accessing through the Internet (not mobile web). Says Blagsvedt, “There’s an evolution that I would say that has happened – obviously we still have the website and the website is used by lots of people, but – we also have a significant part of what we do as a mobile service.”
Says Blagsvedt, “Really, our promise to people coming in from the mobile side is ‘you pay us a rupee a day, and we will send you jobs that are within three or four kilometers from you, that you qualify for now, that make you more money than you make now.'” By giving people an opportunity to find jobs they may not otherwise have heard of, BabaJob is creating a new resource for job seekers to earn money and skills.
BabaJob: Bringing Jobs to People at the Bottom of the Pyramid Locations
Finding a job is hard but in India, BabaJob is making the process a bit easier for job seekers at the bottom of the pyramid.
Started in Bangalore in March of 2007, BabaJob is a matching resource for blue-collar workers looking for jobs. Sean Blagsvedt, co-founder of BabaJob, explains that the inspiration came from Anirudh Krishna’s research paper “Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why?” Blagsvedt learned that most people moved out of poverty through job diversification. However, he noticed that most job-finding resources in India were designed for people seeking white collar jobs. Blue-collar workers and those at the bottom of the economic pyramid had to rely on word of mouth or luck in order to find the jobs that could help them move out of poverty. He decided to create a resource that would allow workers in India to find jobs in their fields and born was Babajob.
Currently, BabaJob is both a website and a mobile service. Job seekers can sign up online or via mobile to receive updates when a job meeting their requirements comes available (job seekers enter their location, type of work they are seeking, and their desired salary in order to narrow the result to relevant matches). Subscribers over USSD services pay one rupee per day to receive messages, but can respond for free. Users can also receive messages over SMS, or access the website over the mobile web. Employers can post their jobs for free, but must pay in order to get contact information for potential employees. Side note: USSD is a capability of all GSM phones, and associated with real-time or instant messaging type phone services. Response times for interactive USSD-based services are generally quicker than those used for SMS.
Challenges and Evolution
Blagsvedt moved to India six years ago to work at Microsoft India's research lab. He said that about 40% of the work at Microsoft dealt with how to create technology that’s relevant to the base of the pyramid, so he was already familiar with creating technology that was accessible to a large number of users.
BabaJob was originally created along with a social networking site called BabaLife. BabaLife’s goal was to facilitate conections between job seekers. BabaLife was based on the idea that people are more likely to hire someone with whom they have a connection and to help people find more opportunities.
However, as the company grew, Blagsvedt found that BabaJob functioned fine without BabaLife. They refocused on BabaJob as a more independent site. Says Blagsvet,”
We probably overestimated the value originally of the social networking pieces, and underestimated the value of the market for jobs. […] After we’d been up for a year and a half, and we looked at how are people actually getting hired, they were usually getting hired not because of the social networking connection but because there was something about the factors between the job seeker and the employer that matched up [such as salary, job proximity, similar language]
Babajob has also changed its target employers. The site originally focused primarily on domestic workers: cooks, maids, etc who would work in private homes. As the company expanded outside of Bangalore to run India-wide, however, it started focuding more on corporate, entry-level work like call center jobs, or service jobs in retail shops. Says Vir Kashyap, COO of BabaJob, “It’s easier to hire someone into the work space than the home space,” so as the company expanded nationally it started working more with corporate partners.
Another way the company has changed significantly from its original incarnation is through greater accessibility through mobiles. The original BabaJob/BabaLife set-up relied heavily on computer usage in order to access the site. Acknowledging that many poorer users would not be have access to the Internet, they set up a "mentor" program in which middlemen would be paid for connecting job seekers (who didn't have regular access to computers) with employers. However, by fully embracing mobile, BabaJob has largely dropped the mentor program as people can now receive job news each day over their phones.
How BabaJob Grew
As the site has scaled up across India, the company has relied heavily on its partnerships with telecommunications companies. “When we’ve expanded to other parts of the country, it’s because we are doing it in conjunction with these telephone companies. And people are largely interacting with us not through the website but through mobile channels – SMS, or mobile web, or a call center,” says Blagsvedt.
The first telecom to reach out to BabaJob was AirTel. AirTel already had a job help network, but featured no blue collar jobs. As mobile phone ownership and usage penetrates into lower income levels grew, the company wanted to find a way to target jobs at the new demographics. A partnership with BabaJob provided Airtel with the sort of jobs it was looking to offer its mobile subscribers. BabaJob has continued to partner with other telecommunications companies and handset providers. According to Kashyap, the partnerships with India’s telecommunications companies have given the company a much broader reach, and a way to rapidly expand by reaching mobile users directly.
Kashyap added that because BabaJob is focused on reaching the greatest number of job seekers, they have worked to make the company easily reachable – users can sign up either online, or over mobiles, or in person in the Bangalore offices. The group plans to expand into offering voice services in the next few months so that semi- and illiterate job seekers can use the service through their mobiles as well.
The company now has roughly 75% of its visitors accessing their information over mobiles, and 25% accessing through the Internet (not mobile web). Says Blagsvedt, “There’s an evolution that I would say that has happened – obviously we still have the website and the website is used by lots of people, but – we also have a significant part of what we do as a mobile service.”
Says Blagsvedt, “Really, our promise to people coming in from the mobile side is ‘you pay us a rupee a day, and we will send you jobs that are within three or four kilometers from you, that you qualify for now, that make you more money than you make now.'” By giving people an opportunity to find jobs they may not otherwise have heard of, BabaJob is creating a new resource for job seekers to earn money and skills.
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