The ComeAI Employability Ecosystem

Emerging evidence on the near-term impact of COVID -19 suggests a two-fold shift in how industry engages with the labour market- increased remote and digitized operations; and a greater emphasis on hiring local. The challenges to this shift are lack of adequate information on 

1. 1. Local employable labour for business

   2. Employment opportunities for labour force 

   3. Micro-level data on challenges faced by local community that hinder access to decent work including infrastructure and telecommunications

   4. Integrated Programs to bridge the local skills gap 

The objective of this initiative proposed by Antarang Foundation and Prism Institute is to address the challenges identified above by creating a scalable technology enabled community-centric ecosystem called ComeAI (कमाई) that leverages basic technological infrastructure like mobile devices powered by AI that would map current and future employment and/or business opportunities for individuals and small businesses in vulnerable low income communities with a particular emphasis on women and youth. 

As of May 2020, India's unemployment rate recorded an all time high of 24.3%, close to 1.6 billion people worldwide are said to be working in the informal sector where they did not have a steady income to begin with. Nearly 81% of the employed in India work in the informal sector per ILO  and are at risk of falling deeper into poverty due to the coronavirus crisis which is expected to wipe out 195 million full-time jobs. 

Our research has indicated that businesses will be shifting their priorities to remote operations with increased digitization and serve local economies by hiring local labour. This provides an opportunity for the population at the bottom of the pyramid. The key challenges for businesses to restart their operations and create local economies include -

1.       Lack of adequate information on the socio-demographic profiles, skills and experience of the employable labour locally

2.   Limited information on available employment opportunities for the labour force especially as they relate to small businesses such as retail, food, education and manufacturing.

3.   Lack of integrated programs that bridge gaps in skills required by  employers with available labour within their communities including access to education and skills development.

This solution proposed by Antarang Foundation and Prism Institute addresses the 3 challenges above by creating local employability hubs called ComeAI (कमाई) that leverage basic technological infrastructure such as mobile devices and GIS solutions and powered by AI that would map current and future employment and/or business opportunities for individuals and small businesses in vulnerable low income communities with a particular emphasis on women and youth. 

The three critical stakeholders of this local employability ecosystem are the local businesses, job seekers and the education/ skill building organisations. 

Key features of solution include-

Creation of  a GIS enabled local businesses database using a combination of web scraping methods and electronic surveys carried out by local youth. These employability hubs with the technology interface will host a near real-time database that would geospatially locate existing businesses. These businesses will be encouraged to list all their local business and manpower needs on the interface. Local job seekers and traders use the interface to gain employment and business opportunities. The AI powered application will intuitively match the needs of the job seeker with local employment providers - and also help the job seeker gain necessary skills by directing them to required skilling opportunities. 

Covid relief needs to now move to recovery - ComeAI brings the dis-aggregated population of small businesses, job seekers and skilling organisations  to the same platform. There are more than 50 million unemployed youth in India; close to 30 million unregistered small enterprises and skilling organisations. Considering that over 77% of urban poor populations have access to android based devices, an electronic survey conducted by local youth basis a simple web scraping method lists local business needs, local employable populations and skilling organisations on the interface. The current pilot has already integrated job seekers and skilling organisations into the solution, has been running for the last year in 2 urban low income pockets in Mumbai, India. The pilot has shown robust acceptance by youth, women and skilling organisations, seeing close to 1200 users within the first 8 months. More than 60%  accessing the interface have been linked to potential employability solutions. The current Covid crisis has highlighted the need for local small businesses to hire local and for the first time job seekers to seek out these local opportunities that are safe, accessible and would not need negotiating crowded and often expensive public transport to commute to work. 

Small local businesses like local grocery shops, food vendors, logistics providers, health care clinics and microfinance agencies are back in business post the crisis. According to our data, ~15% of the population from communities that we work in have migrated back to their villages and another 14% intend to soon, leaving large workforce gaps. There is currently no aggregated  platform for local micro businesses to access capital, labour or other resources. ComeAI seeks to bridge this supply and demand gap for local small businesses and job seekers by creating local employability hubs. 

ComeAI has exploited the opportunity provided by the Covid pandemic and has looked at using existing technology and infrastructure to revive local economies. 

India's markets are unique in that 90% of India's industry comprises small enterprises (63.4 million units as per Confederation of Indian Industry) that hires 40% of India's formal workforce and thousands more informally. It is estimated that 95% of these small businesses are unregistered. India has had employment exchanges at every district that cater to the country's growing population desirous of employment. Antarang Foundation launched brought the concept of the employment exchange to low income communities as employability hubs. These hubs brought skilling providers, educational institutions and job seekers together. Through intensive training combined with optimal industry interface, these hubs have introduced the concept of career planning and aspirational employment to more than 2000 youth from the bottom of the pyramid within a span of a year, 48% of who have been linked to career opportunities. This gives young adults a chance to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. 

The employability hub with its mobile interface has so far been focused on the job seeker - Antarang Foundation in partnership with Prism Insitute sensed the re-emergence of local economies and seeks to extend the use of the interface. The new solutions intends to scaffold the existing hubs and the mobile application with easily available GIS and AI technology and repurpose it to onboard small businesses, thus enabling a bridge between local business and local resources.

ComeAI is a scalable, community-centric ecosystem that leverages basic technological infrastructure such as mobile devices, GIS solutions and powered by AI.  

Using a combination of web scraping methods, GIS tools, and electronic surveys carried out by youth within the community a near real-time database will be developed that would geospatially locate existing businesses using postal codes as the basis and maintained along the lines of a job bank. 

 Building on the existing platform, the application will provide intelligence to the local businesses on the available employable population within the community including their skills and experience and their socio-demographic profiles

 An AI powered tool will be integrated that would match the skill requirements and needs of businesses with the existing information on the labour workforce, identify gaps and recommend institutions and programs in the community and/or online that would assist the workforce in updating their skills.

While not part of the initial pilot, a fully scaled solution with further enhancements will include:

 ·   periodic reporting  to businesses on trends and changes in the demographic profiles

·   prediction of future workforce capacity and skill sets

·   Emerging opportunities for the employable populations

·   Access to skill and needs-based lending programs from banks and financial institutions, grants and other means of financial support for businesses and local entrepreneurs

·   Other development indicators including emerging risks and opportunities related to the community (e.g., aging employable populations, public health issues, infrastructure such as transit, broadband capacity, water/sanitation etc.) that would enable a resilient community ecosystem

ComeAI uses basic technology infrastructure - mobile phones, GIS tools, an AI powered back-end that currently integrates with a Salesforce enabled analytics platform and basic web scraping software. All of these are currently used widely - with India's smart phone penetration, the profile that the solution targets is very familiar with using mobile applications. 

The interface mimicks a easy to navigate and familiar application like Whatsapp or one of the many list based e-commerce applications with a voice enabled chat bot that helps in easy navigation for a population with low literacy. Thanks to the ubiquitous nature of Uber and other ride share applications, the population that is being targeted is also familiar with GIS software like Maps. 

ComeAI integrates these existing technologies into one platform, provides credibility to it through brick and mortar employability hubs that can be easily scaled across geographies.

The current application can be found here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.antarangcareeready.app&hl=en_IN

Awareness
Ability
Continued Access
Activities 
Webscraping to list local businesses and skilling organisations
Electronic Survey to identify small business needs
Integrate existing data sets of job seekers
Electronic survey to list job seekers
Build out V1 of technology application  
Matched list of available job opportunities with available job seekers
Matched list of available upskilling opportunities with available skilling institutions 
Ongoing online resources for small businesses to scale
Matching youth and women with local mentors for career development
Online professional development workshops for career growth of local population
Connects to local banks, investors and industry bodies to scale small businesses
Outputs 
A technology platform that lists and maps local small businesses in one ward geospatially
A detailed data set of verified 500 local small businesses with their employment needs
A detailed data set of ~2000 job seekers with CVs generated
A detailed data set of ~100 skilling providers and educational institutions 
Logic and backend created to match job seekers with local employment providers
A clean technology interface that matches job seekers to job providers  basis skills and education status

A detailed data set of mentors
A detailed data set of workshops
Listed small businesses have access to mentors and potential investors 
Short Term Outcomes 
A go to database for all services targeted at low income youth and local small businesses 
30% of job seekers/ local employment providers matched and begin work in year 1 
30% of listed youth have increased family incomes
30% of listed small businesses fulfil staffing needs locally

Long Term Impact 
Local youth manage and monetise their own data to enable thriving local economies 
A robust local employment ecosystem
Scaled to other urban poor geographies 
Social Impact and Social capital built by harnessing all local resources - small businesses, local industry, civil society, skill providers, education institutions

The current local employability hub with only the youth focus serves ~1000 youth every year. 

ComeAI - the innovative solution will serve ~500 local small businesses, ~2000 local job seekers and ~100 skill providers and educational institutions in the first year of operations. 

In the next 5 years, a minimum of 20 geographies across 3 cities can be on-boarded onto the system - covering at least 20,000 local small businesses, 200,000 job seekers and 5,000 skill building and educational institutions. All of these will be verified, listed and active. 

We estimate that the new technology will impact at least 200,000 lives and add to their family incomes over the next 5 years. 

Imagine a network of interconnected local employability hubs that run on a seamless technology interface that enables local economies to thrive - what an amazingly sustainable world that would be - bringing quality education, decent work to all, strengthening local businesses and reducing inequalities. That is the ultimate objective of ComeAI - ultimately to see local employability hubs becoming part of the national labour and industry policies. This is not without precedent - large manufacturing units have historically set up self sustaining townships across the world - the TATAs and the Reliance Group of Companies have done that in India. That has served just one company and one industry and did not use any technology.

Instead, if employment and business could be democratised, transparent and visible with all resources available on one single platform, it will definitely pave the way for increased wealth creation across the pyramid. Cross geographical sharing of available resources catalyses development of local economies, which in turn contribute to the overall development of a district by ensuring the visibility of data and needs to government and industry. 

The ComeAI interface is being built out - the current hub infrastructure with the job seeker connects and training with the existing technological application costs $57,000 to run for a year. These spends have to be absorbed by local industry and the government which could be a barrier. Small businesses are often not registered and operate informally - and the fear of harassment by officials and tax authorities would be a significant barrier that we would need to overcome. Increased competition as local economies start thriving would be a barrier, especially as the technology that ComeAI is using is easily available and replicable.

Currently, local industry does not make any contribution towards local development - this and the big mindset shift that will need to be changed by encouraging them to list can only be overcome by showcasing the obvious benefits in a relatively short period of time - easy to source skilled labour, verified. Easy to connect with other small businesses for B2B sales. Visibility of success to local investors are all the important success metrics that can be showcased within a relatively short span of operations. 

Antarang Team : 23 full time staff , 6 part time interns 

Prism Team : 2 full time staff, 2 part time interns 

Antarang Foundation is a registered not for profit organisation that is led by an Ashoka Fellow and has been at the forefront of innovative employability solutions in India. Through strong government partnerships, Antarang has already enabled more than 80,000 adolescents and young adults to embark on their chosen career paths. Through strong technology based interventions, Antarang counsels adolescents at the bottom of the pyramid on career choice, trains them in core employability skills, links them to career opportunities and continues to help them grow professionally. Each young adult placed, adds more than 50% to family incomes, enabling families to hope to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty. 

Antarang has established partnerships with industry - with the current Covid crisis and the growing need for resurgence of local economies, Antarang believes that it can re-purpose and extend its expertise from the job seeker to service local business needs. 

To develop and deploy ComeAI (Kamai - in Hindi means employment); Antarang has partnered with Prism Institute, Canada (https://prism.institute/), who are global experts in risk informed decision making and public policy. Prism is headed by Srikanth Mangalam, a World Bank consultant and an expert in advising and developing solutions that meet the SDGs across India and Sub Saharan Africa. 

Antarang Foundation has partnered with Prism Institute, Canada to develop and deploy the first prototype for ComeAI.

While Antarang Foundation provides the ground level intelligence, the local small business connects and the local job seeker data bases; 

Prism Institute, Canada is helping with the development of the AI powered, mobile technology interface that would onboard local businesses and local job seekers and enable the match making process. 

Antarang Foundation is registered as a not for profit organisation and has been serving the education to employment transition needs of adolescents and young adults from the bottom of the pyramid. ComeAI, the solution being proposed targets local small and micro businesses and matches them with job seekers and in the future, access to capital and other resources for them to scale. 

Hence, it is proposed to start a social enterprise that can start charging a nominal listing fee from the small businesses. This would be the main revenue generation. 

The resources that are needed to kickstart and run the soution are the ComeAI technological interface, the local employability hub for local presence and credibility, local businesses listed and access to the local job seekers. 

The 2 key activities that ComeAI will provide in year 1 are listing of small businesses in the local geography and their staffing needs and matching them with the database of local job seekers. A transparent, visible and accessible listing of local businesses and their staffing needs is the biggest gap that the ComeAI solution will fill. We believe that once there is a strong proof of concept, these local employability solutions have tremendous scalability potential. 

The biggest value add to small businesses is an aggregated means of accessing resources that are needed for their scale and growth. The greatest value add during these changing times to job seekers is the ability to access local employment without risking long commutes and public transport. 

Antarang Foundation currently operates as a non profit - to enable the scale and success of the ComeAI solution, we propose an integrated/ Hybrid model - a grant for the initial development of the solution and then charging the local small/ micro businesses a small registration and listing fee to be on the platform and avail of the services. 

Over time, as the number of small businesses who list on the platform, along with skilling organisations and education providers, the listing fees should cover the incremental costs of maintaining the platform. The parallel employability hubs that may continue to run within low income communities is envisaged to be subsidised by the government - as decent employment for all is a SDG goal and a public good. Local government budgets cover this service. It is envisaged that space and personnel would be provided by the government and the technology solution would pay for itself through the listing fees. 

The application process for Solve has been eye opening, pushing us to think hard about what we want to achieve and why; pushing us to broker a partnership with a global organisation that would enable us to develop a "product" that has global relevance. 

Antarang Foundation is at a critical pivot point - we understand that as an organisation committed to solving the exploding crisis of youth unemployment in the world, we need to work much more intensively with small enterprises as they are the engines for employment generation. This means a major pivot for the organisation's business model, culture and working. 

We need the MIT solve platform with its access to resources for business model reengineering, we need the credibility of MIT to give us the stamp of approval which will only add to our established credibility of being an impact focussed not for profit now turning to an integrated hybrid model and we need the combined brain power of entrepreneurs from across the world to solve for an issue that impacts the future of youth through the re-emergence of thriving local economies. 

Antarang understands and awaits the huge reservoir of expertise that the Solver community will provide to catalyse ComeAI's entry to the market place. 

As explained earlier, Antarang Foundation hopes to make a pivot in its business model through ComeAI - from being a not for profit to becoming a market based player. That is the most important support and partnership that it seeks through Solve. The solution technology that has been envisaged is basic and easily available - hence also easily replicable. We need technology partners who can help us build out the technology in ways that would competition proof us, but also make it inexpensive to replicate and scale. 

We are currently used to a grant model of funding and would like to move to an equity + fee revenue based model and would need help in conceptualising and rolling that out. 

We need strong communication and media materials for increased uptake of the solution in the local markets as well as to attract investment. 

Partnering with the MIT India Initiative seems immediate and natural - it is a local problem and the conceptualised solution is local in its origins. 

We are excited about the possibility of working with the MIT school of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences - who understand how to harness AI and the power of technology to promote humanity on the whole. 

We look forward to learning from the solver team at Plastics for Change in Bangalore, India  - which is also a platform based aggregator in a low resourced setting that counts the informal sector as their clients. 

We look forward to learning from Refactored.ai in Boston as they seem to have harnessed the power of AI to upskill and future proof a generation of job seekers. 

Antarang's solution and work centres around enabling young adults become aware of, become able and access careers of their choice. We believe that choice needs to become the prerogative of every young adult and a career that promises both social and economic mobility is the only way to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty that a majority of the young adults that we work with are caught in. Through the last 7 years of intensive work in low income communities across India, we acknowledge that it takes a village to propel young adults into careers and progress. 

This Covid pandemic has highlighted this further - and has underlined how the resurgence of local economies is the first and the most important stepping stone for young adults to gain productive employment and work towards a career. Local small businesses are invested in their local communities and would be the natural care takers to advocate for and promote local employment. Hence, the ComeAI solution completely aligns with the GM vision of enabling inclusive entrepreneurship and promoting decent employment for all - especially for first time job seekers. What is more powerful than enabling and fostering hope for a future that will change the trajectories of families?