Are We Doing Enough to Bridge Bharat and India? Many global studies on the blue-collar industry are showcasing India to be gripped with talent

With nearly 81% of the employed belonging to the informal sector, the blue-collar jobs industry in India is largely fragmented (According to a new report by the International Labour Organisation). Although India ranks highest for informalisation of labour, this equation is rapidly changing with the increase in smartphone usage and internet penetration in the country. With 4G services like Reliance Jio ruling India's telecom market, job seekers are now able to easily access modern day, technology-driven platforms like ours. In fact, according to a study initiated by Nasscom, FICCI and Ernst & Young, titled "Future of Jobs in India – A 2022 perspective', it is found that by 2022, 9% of India's 600 million estimated workforces would be employed in new jobs that do not currently exist. This would include contract employees in the infrastructure sector, freelance workers on online platform models, app-based taxi workers, delivery boys and service providers in the e-commerce ecosystem.

Challenges Not to be Ignored...

While the National Skill Development Mission aims to train approximately 400 million people across the country by 2022, only 2.3 percent of India's workforce has received some formal skills training (as per World Bank estimates in 2017). Hence, discovering trustworthy and skilled talent remains one of the key challenges of recruiters. Attrition is another major factor that plagues blue collar industry. Thirdly, preference for proximity to the workplace is a critical factor when it comes to the employment place for a blue-collar worker. Lastly, the hunger of job seekers at times becomes greed of recruiters. While digitization has brought changes in the workforce and also in the consumer base, all of these require different strategies. A good platform has the power to scale, aggregate a lot of people, match supply with demand and shape industry pricing.

Prosperous India and Hungry Bharat!

Many global studies on the blue-collar industry are showcasing India to be gripped with talent. According to Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm, India is projected to have a skilled-labor surplus of around 245.3 million workers by 2030. It is the only country in their study expected to have a surplus, owing mainly to the vast supply of working-age citizens and government programmes to boost workers' skills. The government has launched a series of initiatives in the skills area, and online platforms like ours are helping with the discoverability of the jobs along with opportunities to make connects with potential recruiters. We are also working with government initiatives like National Career Service (NCS) to make jobs accessible to a majority of Bharat.

Clearly, the division between India and Bharat persists, but opportunities for improvement are vast. The question is, are you geared to find solutions that tackle these challenges?