[Monday Wrap] From using WhatsApp for recruitment to digital employees - your startup fix to start the week

Madhav Krishna started Vahan in 2016 with one idea: to help increase the employability potential of Indian youth. Vahan's virtual assistant piggybacks on WhatsApp to help recruit blue-collar workers. The AI-driven virtual assistant integrated with WhatsApp helps companies automate workforce engagement, and offers blue-collar workers access to job opportunities.

Technology is calling the shots across the world, and virtual people at workplaces may soon be a reality. Founded by Saurabh Kumar, Manish Sharma and Udaya Reddy, AI startup Actionable Science powers virtual people to take over repetitive tasks. The digital employees help enterprise support teams lower costs, boost productivity, and increase employee satisfaction.

Uma Prasad's family has been into the farming business for generations now in Chikkaballapur near Bengaluru. But seeing umpteen cases of farmer suicide led her to start up. Grain Stories helps farmers go organic, offers better price on produce, and wants to take organic farming to other farmers across the country.

Prenatal care is extremely important, especially with statistics from a government screening revealing that more than 5,50,000 women have high-risk pregnancies. Pregnitive, a women's healthcare company, is designing solutions to improve the health of mothers and babies. Listen to your baby’s heartbeat with Suno, a foetal listening device from Hyderabad-based Pregnitive that can used by pregnant women even at home.

Upskilling is a must in every field these days, and medicine is no different. Reason enough for 65,000 doctors to take up edtech with Mediknit, a startup that uses tech to upskill professionals. Founded by Dr Bhaskar Rajkumar and Surendar Parasuraman in August 2016, the platform uses physical and online experiences to keep doctors relevant.

Change begins with innovation. While Freshworks and Helpshift are changing the way global brands work with customers, Jolly App wants to do the same for India with homegrown brands. Founded by Umesh Kumar Agarwal, Jolly App manages customer service for brands in a simple, hassle-free manner. The app, which claims to “do it all”, wants to revolutionise the customer service industry.

A hiring exercise opened Srikanth Varma's eyes to the huge gap between what academia taught and the skills the industry needed. His startup, Hyderabad-based Applied AI Course, is trying to bridge the gap between academia and the deep tech industry. Launched in last September, Applied AI Course offers engineering graduates and tech professionals a one-year online programme in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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