In a significant development today, babajob.com, India’s largest online job marketplace for the informal sector, was identified as a member of the SME India Council set up by Facebook in Asia-Pacific today. Facebook, which has over two million Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) on its platform, has set up a SME Council to help small ventures from various industries share feedback and discuss ideas around leveraging technology to grow their enterprise. This is the second SME Council set up by Facebook globally, the first one being in the US. Globally, over 45 million small businesses actively use Facebook pages to connect to their consumers.
In a post, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg mentioned that “Babajob.com, a job site in India, which uses Internet.org’s Free Basic Services app, has had 60,000 people visit the site and over 10% of them apply for jobs online. This means that 6,000 people who were once unconnected now have an opportunity to apply for a job.”
Vir Kashyap, Co-Founder and COO, babajob.com said, “This is a key milestone for the company. We believe that technology and Internet will connect aspiring jobseekers to India’s best employers. With this development, Babajob hopes this initiative will provide improved, scalable solutions to the business, which will widen their appeal to existing customers and the next billion Indians.”
Maya Chandrasekaran, Chief of Talent, babajob.com represents the organisation in the newly formed council along with other prominent members like Amruta Walvekar (Wrapistry), Anaka Narayanan (Brass Tacks), Anitha Nayak (Floured), Gautam Ivatury (MeraDoctor), R Balakrishnan (GIO Adventures) and Vivek Iyer (English Dost).
On being asked about the initiative, Maya said, “This partnership will help us achieve our vision of organising the blue collar and entry-level job segment in India, sooner and more effectively. We are excited to be a part of this initiative and look forward to creating significant impact.”
The group will meet throughout the year to discuss new ideas, share feedback and work with Facebook to build better ads solutions.
About babajob.com:
Babajob.com is India’s largest online portal for job search for aspiring workers in the informal sector, currently estimated to comprise 94% of the country’s workforce. The company specialises in providing jobs for delivery boys , office staff, drivers, cooks, maids, security guards, beauticians, receptionists and the like, in addition to entry-level positions in the formal sector, including sales, management, finance, engineering, IT, BPO, teaching & data entry jobs. As an added service, personal growth and professional development opportunities through training partners are also offered.
Babajob.com is the brainchild of Sean Blagsvedt – Chief Executive Officer of babajob.com, his step-father Ira Weise and Microsoft colleague Vibhore Goyal, and was founded with the intention of providing ‘Better jobs for everyone’.
A social enterprise, babajob.com works on a scalable, replicable, profitable solution to help fight/alleviate poverty by creating radical efficiency in the informal job market, backed by technology, innovative mechanisms and its proprietary technical algorithm to connect the right talent with the right employer.
Babajob.com has over 500 employees with a purposefully expanding workforce to support growth and market penetration as the company continues to grow, rapidly/scale operations.
Babajob.com received investments from SEEK, Vinod Khosla Impact, Gray Ghost Ventures and USAID.