Shramik

Connecting construction workers with employment opportunities directly.

We are trying to solve the problem that construction workers face on a regular basis in the Indian construction industry, where they are unable to find good employment opportunities independently. We are also trying to eliminate the existing unnoticed corruption done by the contractors in the industry, through our platform.

In India, there are approximately 54 million daily wage construction workers. Majority of them belong to poor living class and lack basic education and skills. Over a third of this strong workforce remain unregistered with any labor welfare board. The average wage of these workers is around ₹178 per day (i.e. $2.16). They are dependent on various channels to find work opportunities. These channels include construction agencies, registered or unregistered contractors and middlemen.

They get paid less than the fair amount because the people involved in getting them work, charge a huge fraction of their wages as commission. Due to the lack of awareness about opportunities, and about improving their livelihood, construction workers suffer the most and are not able to grow well in the fast-paced industry.

Poor earnings are a long-standing issue in the lives of these workers, especially for those who are not registered with any welfare boards. In India, there are fixed locations in every town known as mandis where laborers wait and pick up daily or weekly work. These mandis are exploitative for their income because employers haggle over daily wage rates.

In general, when a construction project is underway, resident and migrant workers are set up in shelters at the construction site or travel to the site regularly. These shelters are usually cramped rooms and a makeshift outhouse. Workers either stay alone or bring their families with them. Poor access to water and sanitation facilities increases the risk of contracting water-borne diseases. Laborers and their families develop respiratory issues from constantly inhaling paint fumes, cement particles, and construction dust. Malnourishment is a serious risk among the children who live on site. The workers earn a pittance, work for long hours in unsafe conditions and have no real job security. When it comes to site safety and workers’ welfare, the conditions are very poor in the construction industry.

Through the outreach and awareness programs of our platform we are also trying to improve the living conditions for construction workers and connecting them with other organizations who organize day-care centers, doctor visits and legal awareness programs.

We aim to improve the daily income of construction workers, ensuring site safety, job security, basic healthcare, humane working conditions and to urge the policymakers to build strict policies that support workers right from the ground level.

Shramik (श्रमिक, Hindi for “workers”) is an app-based online platform which will serve as a one-stop point for workers, providing them with all kinds of employment opportunities on their finger-tips directly. It will eliminate the unnoticed corruptive activities done by contractors leading to more transparency. The opportunities of work can range from repairing anything in a household to building an entire apartment or building.

It includes three core groups of users:

• Customers: Through the app, customers can directly connect with workers as per their requirement of work they want to get done.
• Trainers: Full-time and part-time trainers will be recruited from each region to impart training, aware and connect uneducated and less aware groups of daily wage construction workers with the platform.
• Daily wage workers: Workers can register themselves on the platform independently or with the help of our trainer. They can form their own groups and work together by choosing the opportunity they find best for themselves. 

The working process of the platform:

Customers can post opportunities, by giving details like type of work, type of skills required etc. This opportunity will come as a post on the feed of apps used by trainers and workers. Workers can select that opportunity as per their choice then by assessing different criteria like pay, location, timing and it will notify the customer. Customers and workers can simply make a deal by locking that opportunity. Trainers can spread this notification to those workers who are not digitally literate enough but are skillful to do the job. Each worker and their groups would be assigned star ratings on factors like quality of service given as feedback by customers.

This platform uses the process of application/web development and technology like G-translator for translation in different languages.

Our solution serves the construction workers in India. There are approximately 54 million workers in the Indian construction sector. It is known for its informal nature, with a large number of workers employed in the unorganized category. This sector is the second-largest employer in India after agriculture, providing employment to a diverse range of unskilled and skilled workers.

The COVID-19 pandemic also has had a significant impact on construction laborers, as many construction sites have been forced to shut down or reduce their operations due to lockdowns and social distancing measures. This has resulted in a reduction in demand for construction labor, leading to layoffs and job losses for many construction workers.

Our solution will impact the lives of construction workers through these ways:

• Improved wages and working conditions: By connecting workers with reliable and fair-paying employers, your platform can help to improve their wages and working conditions, which can have a positive impact on their quality of life.
• Increased job security: By providing a stable source of employment, your platform can increase the workers' job security, which can help to reduce the stress and uncertainty associated with finding work.
• Better access to education and training: The platform could also provide access to education and training opportunities, which can help the workers to improve their skills and increase their earning potential.
• Improved representation and rights: The platform could also provide a platform for the workers to raise their voice, and make sure that their rights are being respected.
• Empowerment: The platform can empower the workers to take control of their own lives and make better decisions about their employment.

Overall, the platform could help to improve the social and economic well-being of the workers, which can have a positive impact on their families and communities as well.

My team consists of six young leaders who are deeply passionate about creating an impact on this world. All six of us are trained in the rigorous Dexterity School of Leadership and Entrepreneurship which moulds us to become servant leaders and solve issues faced by our society in an innovative way. This program is lauded for its rigour by many leaders around the world. Our training in entrepreneurship positions us as people who can take up a challenge and build a solution for it.

The passion to build this particular solution has also arisen out of a personal story. Fortunately, or unfortunately, one of our teammates witnessed a blatant corruption being practiced by the middle men (contractors) who managed a group of laborers. As a result of this, the contractor would get a lot of money with negligible work and the laborers would have to go home with minimal wage after long hours of hard work. This experience has fueled our sense of justice and compassion which eventually resulted in developing Shramik.

All of us come from diverse educational backgrounds ranging from IT to Mental health. Our diverse education has helped us look at this solution from all perspectives which has in turn strengthened its viability. All these qualities place us pretty well to deliver this solution.

Any solution needs to be built with diligence and research. And that is what we exactly did. Our solution is not only built to uplift individuals economically but also to give them a social identity as credible workers. Due to the constraint of time, we tried to understand the lives of labourers living in rural areas with the help of secondary data. We focused on various aspects of their lives like their awareness about technological advancements, their readiness to adopt technology, their socioeconomic background, their lived experiences and their expectations about earning daily wages. 

Even though we feel that our research was thorough, we do not want to stop here. We will proceed to get primary qualitative and quantitative data to understand the lives of daily wage construction laborers with respect to earning, social standing and corruption. 

We will also seek feedback from the users of our solution as we complete our pilot phase. Every feedback of our user will feed into our research and help in making or solution more suitable and viable for our users.

Shramik is a first-of-its-kind solution to an unnoticed problem. It is innovative in various ways like:

• It makes use of mobile devices like smartphones or regular phones and internet, which gives us the advantage of scaling its footprint at lowest possible expense.
• It will be transformative and directly impact the workforce, by bringing a social and digital revolution in their lives after centuries.
• It juxtaposes traditional skills and methods with modern technology, giving rise to new innovative methods in every different work of the construction industry.
• It integrates a larger section of the poor living class and offers them employment from a much larger pool of opportunities than before.
• Due to the user-friendly interface of the platform, workers facing language barriers in different regions can find and do their job easily.

For the next year, we are hoping to implement our solution on a smaller scale in order to understand the viability of our solution better before launching it on a large scale. We will be training a small batch of young trainers from various rural areas of a particular state. This training will be about conducting further awareness and training sessions for the laborers of their respective villages. These trainers will be full-time employees who will assist the people in their village throughout - from registering on our portal to getting a job. 

By using the concept of Randomized Control Trial, we also plan to conduct a pre-test post-test control group, an experimental group study to see the long term effect of people getting jobs on our platform on their job satisfaction and quality of life. Based on the results of this pilot study, we plan to fix loopholes in our solution in order to make it more efficient. Once our pilot is successful in one state of India, we plan to train young trainers belonging to rural backgrounds throughout the country. The technological nature of our solution will enable it to spread exponentially in the entire country. And the awareness and community support aspect of the solution will allow it to penetrate deeper into the remote parts of the country.

The core technology that powers our solution includes:

• Cloud-based systems: Cloud-based systems such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud can provide the infrastructure and scalability necessary to support a large number of users and data.
• Mobile App Development/Web development: A mobile app or a web-based platform could be a great way to provide easy access for the workers to job opportunities, education and training, and other services.
• Database Management: A database management system such as MySQL, MongoDB, or PostgreSQL can be used to store and manage large amounts of data on workers, employers, and job opportunities.
• Machine Learning: Machine learning techniques such as natural language processing, computer vision, or predictive analytics can be used to improve the platform's functionality and efficiency.
• Blockchain: Blockchain technology could be used to ensure the transparency, security, and immutability of the data stored on the platform and also be used to track the payments and transactions of the workers.
• SMS Gateway Service: It allows you to send and receive SMS messages through an API. These services typically provide libraries or SDKs that can be integrated to handle the communication with the SMS gateway. Some SMS gateway services include Twilio, Nexmo, and Plivo. This helps in overcoming the network glitch barrier by sending opportunity updates through SMS in offline mode.

We hope to serve 10,000 construction workers in the next year by registering them on the platform and then scale it gradually throughout India. We want to exponentially increase the number of users by covering more regions, especially to the remote corners of India, from where the majority of construction workers migrate in order to search for employment.

A cultural barrier exists to make the uneducated construction workers use the platform and make it as part of their profession. As soon as we scale up, the platform will face technical issues in terms of handling large amounts of data. The average registration can turn out to be less than projected numbers when we scale, due to the possibility of digital and financial illiteracy among the poor living class of workers.

Shramik will provide value to customers and construction workers by acting as an instantaneous bridge between them, which will increase the number of temporary small-jobs for workers to do on a daily basis, increasing their daily income multiple times than before. The platform will save a lot of time for workers to find employment opportunities.

Since it is app-based and will be working offline as well with the help of trainers, all services can be provided in real-time on a larger scale. Customers get the access to choose the best worker available in their nearby region among a larger pool of workers, to get their work done quickly, saving a lot of time and money.

We plan to offer advertisement deals to fund the initial operations during the pilot stage, alongside our own investments in the platform.

In the long-term, we will appeal to businesses by reaching out to them and building mutually beneficial relationships for acquiring sponsorships and investments. Also, we will look for philanthropies and grants across business and government sectors.