Three entrepreneurs combine social networking with online job search for thebenefit of unskilled workers
Sean Blagsvedt was working at Microsoft’s Research Labs in Bangalore two years ago when he came across a research paper by professor Anirudh Krishna of the Duke University on the causes of poverty and its alleviation.
Having moved to India when Microsoft was setting up the Lab in 2003, Sean’s job at the time consisted of communicating the ideas put out by the Ph.D researchers at the Labs to the company’s product team for implementation. But it was Krishna’s paper that left the deepest impression on Sean.
 |
| Sean Blagsvedt, CEO Prior to founding Babajob, Sean spent 8 years at Microsoft, interning in 1996 and 1997 and joining full-time in 1999 in the Office group in Redmond as a Program Manager. In 2002, Sean moved to the Windows Vista User Experience team, designing the Messenger experience in Vista and how the OS represents people. Finally, in fall 2004, Sean moved to Bangalore as the 3rd founding member of the Microsoft Research India, focusing on novel approaches to technology in emerging markets and new strategies in the mobile phone space. |
“I came to India because the move offered the chance to set up an organization from scratch, with a great charter: to build applications for poor people,” says this 31-year-old from Oakland in the US. While Sean did figure out ways to convert some of the work done by the researchers at the labs into actual products, it was Krishna’s ideas that, after a year-and-a-half, led him to quit his job and start his own venture - babajob.com
Started three months ago, babajob offers users the opportunity to find a new cook, gardener, driver, nanny, maid, office boy etc. from the comfort of their home. While mainstream sites like naukri.com and monster.com cater to the educated workforce, babajob tries to bring the benefits of the internet to the “sub 10k” job-market. “Nobody was paying attention to the market because the prospective employees - maids, drivers, gardeners - did not have access to computers and the internet and could not register themselves online,” Sean points out. “Yet, this was a huge under-served market... (it is) nearly 50% of the job market?” he wonders.
While the opportunity and the associated problem was obvious, Sean, who always had a thing for “mass”, scalable ideas, had got a valuable insight from Krishna’s research paper. The paper was based on a four-month-long study of people falling into and getting out of poverty in 35 villages in Rajasthan and put out a set of conclusions on how people, given the right environment, emerged out of poverty by themselves.
“The study basically said that the key to rising out of poverty was diversification... that one of the members of the family had got a job, usually in a city. And the information about these jobs came through connections -you got a job because you knew someone who knew someone who knew of the job.. “ he explains.
 |
| Vibhore goyal, CTO Prior to Babajob.com, Vibhore worked as a developer for Microsoft Research India on a variety of projects. Vibhore’s areas of interest include Security & Networking and he holds a B. Tech. + M. Tech. in Electrical Engg. from IIT Bombay. |
It is this insight which forms the core idea of babajob. In its revenue model, babajob too is based on the principle of the recruiter paying, while the job-seeker gets a free listing, like the other job portals. However, unlike the mainstream recruitment sites, babajob could not expects its prospective job-seekers -- maids, drivers and gardeners -- to fill out forms and sign up on the net.
“On the one hand, information about job opportunities was crucial for these people, yet they could not be brought into the net because of problems like access to PCs, low literacy levels etc.,” points out Sean. It was then that Sean, along with Vibhore Goyal, a 26-year-old programmer from the Labs who joined him in the venture, decided to use one of the most widespread phenomena online, social networking, to solve the problem.
“We realized that tying it up around a social networking site would give us two advantages,” says Sean, “One was that all the members of the network could act as the last mile access for the less privileged job-seekers to the internet, suggesting them and filling in their forms. Second is that it also solved another problem - that of trust. When it comes to household workers, people tend to prefer employ someone recommended by someone within their friends-circle. So, social networking plus employee recommendation tied in very well,” he says. So Sean, along with Vibhore, built a social networking site - babalife, to go along with babajob.
Sean and stepfather Ira Weise have funded the project so far. Ira, a 58-year-old, is the veteran of three companies and brings his managerial experience to the team. “He was retired and was into remodelling houses with my mom when I pulled him in,” he smiles.
 |
| ira weise, MD Ira has founded a variety of companies as an experienced entrepreneur over the last 25 years, including 800-Software, one of the US’s first mail order software companies, and the first to offer free technical support and toll free order lines. |
His third partner, Vibhore Goyal came from the Labs. He was taken into Sean’s team after being recommended to Microsoft as a “good hacker” by people at IIT Bombay and writes most of the code for the platform. Vibhore has brought to babalife a robust set of features like with customizable friendship levels, making it on-par with the best in the business as far as the technology is concerned.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
