On a mission to employ, engage, and upskill the lifeblood of an enterprise: The BGC workers
Blue and grey collar workers are at the soul of any enterprise. In India, an estimated 500 million of the workforce consists of blue-collar workers. Empowering this workforce, who handle manufacturing, logistics, and provide customer service to companies is equivalent to strengthening our country. Blue collar workers are at the crux of a company’s financial and economic health. In an exclusive conversation with CXOToday, Mr. Ajay Kumar Singh, Chief Business Officer and Senior Vice President, Billion Careers, discusses on his vision, the business model, challenges, and skills required for employing and empowering the blue and grey collar workforce.
- Please share an overview on Billion Career and elaborate on your business model.
Billion Careers provides end-to-end digital solutions for blue & grey collar workforces and the workplace. These include hiring, on-boarding, engaging, upskilling, and enhancing productivity. Founded in 2020, Billion Career’s vision is to make a difference in the lives of blue & grey collar workers and the workplace through employment, engagement, and upskilling.
Our business model includes three product suites – Qjobs (Hiring solution), WorkQ (Workforce and Productivity platform), and Dash (Employee benefits and Engagement marketplace). Billion Careers has over 5.4 million job seekers on Qjobs, over 2 million job postings a quarter, we upskill over 940K job seekers, engage over 1.5 lakh employees annually through Dash, and has over 100k users marking attendance through WorQ. Our products are trusted by clients from various sectors such as BFSI, Consumer goods, Agri/Pharma, Telecom, Automobile, Logistics, and more. Our company has over one thousand happy clients including Bajaj, Kotak, Sharekhan, Axis Bank, Modern Diaries, Toyota, Amazon, Uber, and Dunzo.
- Please share the mission and vision of Billion Career and what’s your expansion plan for FY23.
Billion Careers envisions to make a difference in the lives of blue and grey collar workforce and their workplace through employment, engagement, and upskilling. Our mission is to help employees upskill themselves, identify their passion, and carve their path to a successful career. We want to be wise, passionate, and reliable. We are also aiming to spread our services across the country and are planning to build a community of 10 million blue and grey collar employees by 2025.
- What were the challenges faced by blue-grey collar workers in the past few years? How has technology helped the company overcome these challenges?
While there are several job portals catering to the employability of white-collar workers, the same cannot be said of blue-collar workers. The blue collar and grey collar workers are the backbone of many industries such as construction, e-commerce, retail, BFSI, manufacturing, transport & logistics, and security & facility management. In India, out of 500 million workers, 170 million are digitally active blue-collar and grey-collar workers. In 2026, the number of digitally active blue and grey collar workers is expected to exceed 243 million as a result of economic growth, increasing digitization, and government investments in Production Linked Schemes (PLI) of manufacturing. As a result, this geographically dispersed and unorganised workforce faces challenges as there is no single unifying platform that can effectively solve our employability problems.
It was to solve this ever-growing problem that Billion Careers Pvt Ltd (a subsidiary of Quess Corp) launched Qjobs. Through Qjobs, we are addressing the issues of job creation, job discoverability, and job matching for blue and grey collar workers, companies, and recruiters. In addition to helping employers find pre-screened and skilled candidates, we offer job seekers the opportunity to showcase their skills, learn new skills, and find employment closer to their location. In the last two years, we have enhanced Qjobs, the blue-grey collar recruitment portal with unique features unavailable on other portals. In India, there is a large segment of unorganised blue and grey collar workers, and Qjobs is focused entirely on helping them find formal employment and gain skills.
Technology has managed to create seamless experience for QJobs users. The Qjobs app was designed with simplicity in mind and is available in five languages – Hindi, English, Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu. The app uses AI-powered matching engine to match the right jobs to candidates based on geo-proximity, skills, education, experience, and multiple other factors. Qjobs app further simplifies the recruitment process by automatically screening the candidates as recruiters often do have the time to reach out to a massive number of job seekers. The Qjobs app, in this case, collects important relevant documents and ensures that candidates are pre-validated making the background verification easier for recruiters. All of this translates into a high placement ratio which is about 15%. With leading employers, placement ratio goes over 25%.
- What are the skills that recruiters seek the most while hiring employees from the blue-grey collar industry?
The Indian economy is experiencing a positive shift thanks to technological advancements, which are driving the demand for digital and analytical skills. Robotics, 3D printing, and artificial intelligence are changing the blue collar work space, and companies are searching for employees with these skills.
Communication has always been one of the most in-demand skills in blue and grey collar jobs. There is a lot of upskilling happening on the QJobs platform amongst sales and delivery executives. Since November 2020, over one million Blue and Grey-collar workers have used the platform to upskill. Basic English skills, such as daily conversation, customer service, and communication to win, always go a long way. Another skill that has gained traction on the platform is basic Excel upskilling. So far, QJobs has upskilled more than a million jobseekers/candidates.
