Beyond being the UAE’s only digital hiring platform dedicated to helping blue-collar workers find job opportunities, Skillbee is also helping create a professional community for employees to network, interact, and share knowledge.
Having witnessed the hardships that blue-collar workers face to secure jobs overseas, V. Ravichandra Gautham and Ujjawal Chauhan co-founded Indian start-up Skillbee to make a difference.
Skillbee helps blue-collar workers find jobs without having to go through any agent or consultant or deposit money to any recruiter.
“When white-collar workers are looking for jobs, they have so many tools at their disposal for applying, building networks, and even checking if a company is trustworthy,” shared V. Ravichandra Gautham, co-founder and COO of Skillbee.
“However, I was surprised to see that despite the majority of blue-collar workers using smartphones, none of them had any professional identity online. So, if a worker based out of India wanted to work abroad, they could only know about the job opportunity through a network of recruitment agents. I felt that in the 21st century, that doesn’t make sense anymore.”
Clear market gap
According to reports by India’s Bureau of Immigration, the GCC region makes up four of the five top destinations for overseas work among both Indian professionals and blue collar workers, and around 52 percent of the UAE’s workforce is comprised of blue-collar workers.
“There is almost $10 billion worth of recruitment fees that are spent by workers who are trying to move across borders – if there’s a big market, then there’s a deep problem and a clear gap to fill,” said Gautham.
“The majority of blue-collar workers have smartphones now and they feel empowered by the internet, so we felt that it was the right time to finally solve this information asymmetry, so that anybody can have access to job opportunities without going through agencies.”
V. Ravichandra Gautham and Ujjawal Chauhan co-founded Indian start-up Skillbee.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, international travel restrictions and closed borders placed a halt on Skillbee’s original mission – helping blue-collar workers migrate to more developed countries for better job opportunities. To overcome this hurdle, the co-founders found another market opportunity for Skillbee to tap into.
“Throughout the pandemic, blue-collar workers in the Middle East have been greatly impacted, facing layoffs and having no option but to go back to their home country,” said Gautham.
“So, we decided, rather than starting from a source country, such as India, why not start our operations from a destination country, like the UAE, instead. Since the borders were closed, we wanted to build relationships with thousands of employers who can then use the platform for local recruitment, with the hopes that it would later provide us with an opportunity to expand as a cross-border recruitment product.”
As well as serving blue-collar workers, Skillbee is also satisfying the recruitment needs of smaller companies, helping UAE SMEs list their job vacancies for free and get access to a wide range of potential candidates.
“Recruitment agents generally do not work with small companies, only going after big volume hiring. However, for someone who’s starting a new interior decor business for example and wants to hire five carpenters and a couple of painters, there is no platform for them to easily connect with skilled personnel,” said Gautham.
As of last week, Skillbee reached a new milestone, signing a total of 10,000 ethical recruiters.
Around 52 percent of the UAE’s workforce is comprised of blue-collar workers.
Networking platform for workers
With its continued success, Skillbee has ambitions that surpass being a jobs platform only, hoping to build a community for blue-collar workers to interact, network, and raise awareness around the recruitment fraud they regularly encounter.
“Skillbee is passionate about becoming a part of the lifecycle of the worker,” shared Gautham.
“We’ve recently launched a networking feed on our platform, where even if a worker is not looking for a job, he can start building up his own network. This is important because usually when workers are migrating to another country, they’re starting over and have left their own network back in their home country.”
The Skillbee co-founders believe that a powerful network list can unlock even further opportunities for blue-collar workers, as well as act as a platform for knowledge exchange.
“These are all standard advantages that we enjoy today because of networking platforms, such as LinkedIn. So, we want to bring these benefits to this audience as well.”
Skillbee, helping UAE SMEs list their job vacancies for free and get access to a wide range of potential candidates.
Promising results
Skillbee raised $400,000 in its last fundraising round in August 2020. The pre-seed round was led by Indian VC funds Good Capital and First Cheque and saw participation from marquee angel investors, including the founders of Meesho and Sharechat, which are now unicorn start-ups in India.
“We are on the right trajectory and the growth numbers really speak for themselves. For SMEs in the UAE, a lot of them are run by the local Emirati population who have been looking for such a product,” said Gautham.
“In a single month, we have been signing up more than 2,000 companies. At this rate, I think we may be soon able to capture at least 10 percent of the SME market. The UAE SME market contains around 400,000 to 500,000 players, so we aspire to get at least 50,000 employers in the UAE signed up in the next 12 months.”