Delhi-based Youth4work saves employers' time by finding talent and accessing them

The tech platform suggests the right course based on the requirements of users and possible career graphs from a list of more than 1,500 courses it offers.

Every year, nearly two lakh MBA aspirants take the Common Admissions Test (CAT) but only about 10,000 make the cut. Lady luck or the manner of preparation rather than lack of talent separates a majority of the rest from those who clear CAT. Rachit Jain thought he could better equip this talent pool for the job market.

Rachit, 33, launched Youth4Work in 2012 to create 'pre-assessed’ talent communities for companies to connect with.

So on one hand, the platform helps people assess their own strengths and weakness, improve themselves by choosing the right courses and get employed. On the other hand, it makes profiles available to companies to help them easily engage with such talent and communicate about their brand. The platform also helps companies find people with specific skill sets for specific activities. For example, a large IT company can contact a group of designers to get feedback on their product.

Bridging the skill gap

Youth4work’s preparation test platform for college students has over 274 different exam preparation materials and 5,000 tests takers each day prepping for various tests. It also helps youth assess themselves with more than 400 different skill tests. The tech platform suggests the right course based on the requirements of users and possible career graphs from the list of more than 1,500 courses that it highlights.

More than five lakh users come on the Youth4work platform every month, and YourStory was able to verify that the platform has chalked up more than three crore page views on an average per month.

While having bootstrapped Delhi-based Youth4works with personal savings and money borrowed from friends and family, Rachit was able to raised $500,000 bridge capital in 2014, from a group of investors, including angel investors Sanjay Bansal, Dan Sandhu, Aurum Equity Partners LLP and GAP investments.

Raised in Delhi and having done manufacturing engineering at National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology, Ranchi, he has worked at Mahindra & Mahindra in the past.

Scalability

The user communities of Youth4work span across domains like IT, engineering, sales and marketing, finance, retail, HR, and design, and those that come under the government-run Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) skill programme, among others.

Intelligent assessment and global ranking algorithms help users to identify, improve and showcase their talents, Rachit notes.

“We are in the business of selling information and giving access to our technology. We earn revenue by upskilling youth with prep tests, online courses and by giving employers access to data for hiring,” he adds.

Youth4Work expects to reach one crore users in the next year-and-a-half. Naukri.com, which adds about 12,500 users each day, is Youth4work's main competitor. But Rachit argues that Youth4Work, which adds 4,000 users per day on an average, provides assessed profiles and better insights in comparison.

Besides, Youth4Work has partnered with Mexico-based Centro Netec, the biggest business skills training company in Latin America, with offices and operations in Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Peru and more. It plans to expand to more than 12 Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, as well as Spain. It will launch its Spanish version in the next six months.

A growing industry

The 2016 Monster Employment Index for June revealed that online recruitment activity in India grew by 17 percent year-on-year.

Venkatesh Peddi, VP, IDG Ventures (India), says, “Online hiring space has witnessed the entry of several startups that are working on different aspects of recruitment function to bring in more efficiencies using technology and disruptive ideas. We estimate that overall spend on technology around recruitment in India is expected to grow to $4-5 billion by 2020.”

The industry has also witnessed a couple of M&A activities in the past year. New York-based interviewing platform JustCode acquired Bengaluru-based Jobspire Technologies, while online classified platform Quikr has acquired Bengaluru-based online recruitment firm Hiree, and marketplace Babajob.

Website: Youth4work