Pivoting to a unorganised blue collared space, Galijob cracks the no-response problem

Sushant Kumar was getting impatient. Three days after he had spoken to a plumber and settled on a negotiated price, the plumber was yet to get back to him. This is a common problem, and it’s not just on the customer’s side - many a time, the plumber himself has to wait for a response from employers.

It was something 36-year-old Saurabh Saha and 33-year-old Ajay Anandteertha decided to solve with their app Galijob. It acts as a job marketplace where jobseekers can get a response from an employer within 24 hours. Alternatively, employers also get a response from candidates within that time frame.

The pivot

The duo was initially working on a product called Talentpegs in 2015, which worked as a sourcing engine for the white collared job market. But their first-hand experience of this problem later led them to the realisation that the blue collared job space was far larger and more unorganised.

Saurabh and Ajay have a decade of combined experience in product engineering, software development and product management across top MNCs and Fortune 500 companies across the globe. They met in Bengaluru in 2014 at an Open Coffee Club, and hit it off on their mutual interest in the recruitment space.

“With the current mobile penetration at more than one billion, with decent smartphone penetration, we saw an opportunity to revolutionise the hiring process for blue collar candidates,” says Saurabh.

The app ensures that there is continuous engagement between employers and jobseekers. Its algorithm studies the hiring patterns of employers and the job choosing patterns of candidates, which ensures that employers get the kind of candidates they are looking for and candidates see get the kind jobs they want.

Seeking a niche in the crowd

However, the number of startups that are focused on organising the blue collared job market isn’t small. Startups like Nanojobs, BookMyBai, LaundryAnna, HonestCollars, Homemaid, Getdomestic and HonestCollars are already in the space.

The recruitment market in India is worth about $800 million, and is growing at 20 percent annually, according to data by Matrix partners. But the space is also highly unorganised, and with several players in the field, it becomes difficult to discern what the real problems are and how people are solving them.

This was one of the challenges that Galijob faced. Explaining this, Saurabh says,

“We found that the real problem lies in engaging with jobseekers who optimistically register expecting to get placed, only to have no one get back to them, leaving them in the lurch and causing heartburn.”

On the employer side, candidates usually don't turn up for interviews. Keeping that in mind, the team wrote algorithms that would constantly engage with jobseekers and employers through notifications and alerts till both the parties get exactly what they are looking for.

Also, considering the kind of platform the team was building, it was important that they worked towards ensuring both jobseekers and employers joined Galijob. Saurabh adds that they are doing everything to reach out to as many people as possible through different marketing channels, which include offline marketing, email drip campaigns, text drip campaigns, SEO, SMM, SEM, content marketing and partnerships with State Governments. The team has partnered with the Government of Karnataka and is also looking to integrate with Mobile One.

Cracking the space

After running a public beta, the team launched their app by the end of October. They claim to have onboarded over 400 job seekers and 100 employers within 10 days of the launch, and that they see an average growth rate of 25 percent week-on-week.

“Our platform has successfully been used to conduct close to 10 interviews by employers over the past month,” says Saurabh. For the first year, the team intends to focus on customer acquisition, post which the focus will shift to revenue. The idea is to empower millions of unemployed people across the country and place them with employers in their respective areas of preference in less than 24 hours.

“What sets us apart from the existing competition is the fact that we guarantee a response from the employer in less than 24 hours. At the other end of the spectrum, we keep the employers engaged and ensure that they get a candidate,” he says.

Once a profile is shortlisted by an employer, the team ensures that the two parties can communicate with each other. to take things forward. The employer gets to see every single piece of information about the candidate in his application to enable him to take a call.

The app will be free for one year, post which the team at Galijob intends to charge for their premium services.

“We plan to develop a healthy customer base first, and then to introduce premium features for employers who hire in bulk. We however plan to leave the posting of jobs and accessing the database free forever,” says Saurabh.

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