Helpers Near Me

Helpers Near Me is like Uber for finding & hiring nearby Blue-collar Workers.

On the one hand, the platform makes it easy, quick, reliable & affordable for millions of Households & Small Business Owners to find & hire nearby Blue-collar Workers.

And on the other, it enables the 500M Indian Blue-collar Workforce in finding local employment directly from nearby Employers, free of cost, without any middlemen in between.

Benefits for Workers:

• Free of Cost
• They don't need to have a smartphone or any digital literacy to use it. 
• They can connect with just an old feature phone and an active mobile number.
• After joining the platform, every local employer starts finding the Workers, not vice-versa
• Workers get to connect with multiple nearby Employers for employment
• No middlemen or commissions involved in between
• Workers get to work as per their preferred work, location and salary
• Workers become a part of the Digital Economy, without any digital literacy

About 500M Indian Workforce are Unorganized, Less Educated, Technology challenged & do not have any organized means to find potential local work opportunities.

Likewise, about 16M Households & about 20M Small Businesses Owners in India do not have a convenient & organized source for finding & hiring local Blue-Collar Workers. 

Globally, 100+ Developing Countries have a similar challenge. Almost in every developing country, for 1/3rd of the population face difficulties in finding local employment. The whole experience is unorganized. And often, the middlemen take undue advantage of the unorganized system - charge money against fake promises of employment, etc.

Collectively the challenges Workers face:

Low Digital literacy | No Choice | Takes long to find work | High reliance on References | Limited reach to potential nearby Employers | Want work close to home | Don’t know much about who hires them | Middlemen exploit them | Pay monthly commissions to Agents if they get hired through them | No job security | Not educated enough | Have an old feature phone OR a basic smartphone, but don’t know much about how to use it | And now the fear of Covid19

The challenges on the Employers' side are also similar.

SOLUTION:

WORKERS get calls for nearest employment opportunities, directly from nearby Employers, FREE of cost, without searching for it on the streets or through the middlemen. 

EMPLOYERS get to find & hire the nearest professionally verified Workers, via mobile phones, at a nominal fee of just INR 99-999, in 3 simple steps. 

Target Population - Blue-collar Workforce from the bottom of the pyramid

Profiles - Domestic Workers, Restaurant Workers, Factory Workers, Healthcare Workers, School Workers, Salon Workers, etc.

The average monthly income of such a Blue-collar Worker ranges between INR 10,000 to INR 12,000. Collectively husband & wife earns a monthly household income of about INR 20,000.

For such profiles of the Workforce, we believe the mother of all the problems they go through is basically the "Source Of Income". If their source of income is taken care of, most of their other problems in life usually get taken care of - child's education, healthcare, food, etc. 

The solution addresses this very core problem of helping Workers find regular local employment opportunities, therefore giving them an option to find a constant "source of income", as per their preference.

Digital enables everyone to do better & more in life.

However, it has a limited reach within the bottom of pyramid workers, especially in India (& Indonesia) where due to lack of education & digital literacy, the true access of digital is limited among millions of workers.

About 45% of the population still don't have a smartphone, while the ones who do have, their challenge is that they don't know enough to use the smartphone appropriately. Digital literacy is limited. Hence, the usage is primarily limited to accessing images & videos, just one way, via apps like FB, Youtube & WhatsApp.

Collectively, whether they have a smartphone or not, they are still far away from becoming a true smartphone user. 

What if we enable workers to access the digital economy without any digital literacy? What if we enable workers to find local employment without any dependency on smartphones?

That's exactly what Helpers Near Me does.

HNM is designed in a way that allows everyone to find local employment (via the digital infrastructure) without a smartphone or any digital literacy. A phone call from an active mobile number is all that's required, from whichever geolocation the worker is located in.

Based on workers' preferences (work profile, salary, location of work, etc.) and their skills, they are mapped directly with the local employers via Helpers Near Me.

The platform directly connects the workforce with the local demands, a reason why we believe our solution aligns with the challenge.

Thus far we have helped more than 21,000 workers find local employment, 80% of whom are just women workers.

Rajiv R Pandey

Our solution is innovative because no one has ever tried mapping local workers with nearby employers like the way our solution does.

Including Blue-collar Workers in a digital economy and helping them with local employment without any digital literacy makes the work even more challenging.

At the workers level, having a proper Education has always been a challenge. which leads to a limited understanding of technology. Plus, if they are not financially stable, buying a smartphone and paying for its usage is another challenge.

While designing our solution at HNM, we kept these basic challenges in mind. 

Almost 99% of digital solutions are usually designed, keeping in mind that one has the basic know-how of technology and that the person has a smartphone, to begin with.

Our solution is unique because we include the bottom of the pyramid workers in the digital economy without asking them to get digital literacy or internet connection. All we ask them is to have an active mobile connection. So they become part of Helpers Near Me, and hence a part of the digital economy with just an active mobile number. 

And once they've joined HNM, workers start getting mapped to nearby Employers for local employment via our digital platform.

We believe our solution is innovative because it includes workers in the digital economy without a prerequisite of education, smartphone or any digital literacy.

Our solution has been designed on Laravel and Angular JS and hosted on AWS.

Based on their geolocation, we follow an onion circle principle to map the Workers with local Employers.

Furthermore, the solution uses AI-based mapping of local Employers & Workers. The AI-based mapping considers the best match based on a combination of 40-50 different data points gathered over a period of time for both the Employers & the Workers before mapping them together. 

The technology is simple, but the way we used it makes it unique.

The entire system works somewhat similar to how you find an Uber Cab, except that on the other side Workers do not respond on a Smartphone. They just respond via direct calls.

With our solution and milestones achieved so far, we can already see the signals of change.

# More than 51,000 Workers Onboard thus far

# More than 21,000 mapping of local Employers & Workers achieved 

# More than 104,000 family members of workers impacted thus far

In our current status, we get many referrals from Workers - their friends, neighbours & family members. Likewise, we get referrals from Employers as well. We have multiple repeat Employers. And via our platform, many Workers have received numerous local employment opportunities.

A platform like ours opens up a whole new spectrum for the workers. In the long run, getting enough local employment opportunities allows workers to find a better working environment and better salaries for themselves and a chance to improve their quality of life.

CURRENT Stats:

# Aggregated 51,000+ Blue-collar Workers 

# Mapped 21,000+ Workers with nearby Employers (80% being Women Workers)

# Attracted 93,000+ Employers from all over India

In the next 1 year, we expect the following traction:

Workers Onboarding - 200,000+

Mapping of 80,000+ Workers with nearby Employers

In the next 5 years:

Workers onboarding - 1M+

Mapping of 0.5M+ Workers with nearby Employers

Some of the indicators that we use are (per day):

1. Number of workers mapped with employers
2. Number of workers hired
3. Orders received
4. Number of customers engaged
5. High & Low moving profiles
6. Number of Workers who we spoke to
7. Number of new workers who joined Helpers Near Me
8. Heatmaps

The main barrier is the financial support to scale our work at a national level and then later to Indonesia.

The other barriers are minor and can be tackled as we move forward in our path.

We are in constant touch with the Angel network and VCs in India to invest in our project. We have made some inroads as well. Soon, we would be able to overcome the barrier.

A team of 8-10 members at the moment. Pre-Covid we were about 15-18 of us.

RAJIV, 47, Marketing professional, 21+ years of Marketing & Advertising experience at VLCC Personal Care (Head of Marketing), McCormick India (Associate Director, Marketing), Kohinoor Foods (DGM, Marketing), FCB Advertising (Strategic Brand Planner) and others; Education - IIMA (Executive Education), Stuart GSB, IIIT, Chicago (MS in Marketing Communication), Amity Business School (MBA, Marketing), Chandrapur Engg College (BE in Mechanical Engineering) - Rajiv shares a strong connect with Workers

UMESH, 29, Software Engineer; 7+ years of software development experience at Office of DGAFMS, Ministry of Defence (Software Developer) & Virasat Solutions (Software Developer) - Umesh is the son of a Worker

Team size - 8 (About 15-18, pre-Covid) - Daughters and Wives of Workers

4 Industry Advisors (also current Investors) - from Online, HR & Ex-Army 

If you notice, 90% of our team are females. 

Going forward we intend to keep it that way only. The leadership team may come from diverse backgrounds and communities, however, for the core staff who onboards workers and deal with them every day, we intend to have only the daughters and wives of Workers.

This way it also helps us maintain a strong bonding with the Workers. 

We have had collaborations with the Indian Government (Skill India) and a few Women-centric NGOs.

Collectively, they all help us connect with the workers at the ground level.

The mother of every problem that any worker goes through is the "source of income".

HNM enables workers to find multiple local employment as per their preference of work, location, salary, distance to work, etc.

This helps them take care of their "source of income".

Values they get from HNM:

# HNM supports workers ‘free of cost’, and helps them in finding local employment without the middlemen in between

# Once a worker joins HNM, local work starts finding the Workers, not vice-versa, and they start getting multiple employment opportunities

# With HNM, Workers reach out to thousands of nearby Employers

# Workers directly with the nearby Employers directly

# Workers get to work as per their preferred work, location and salary

# Workers don't need to have a smartphone for accessing HNM. They can connect even if they have an old feature phone with them

For 2 reasons:

# Earn recognition for our work at Helpers Near Me.

# Accelerate raising funds to scale the project

# Network with like-minded people, globally.

We are in the early stage of our business. As we scale, there is still an ample amount of work to be done. Furthermore, our business model, technology, human capital and everything else would evolve as we grow. We would need partnership help wherever possible.