DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

The site has been on the beta mode so far, with around 70 low-skilled workers already placed and a data-base of around 1700 job-seekers. The platform gives free access to the database to potential employers.

However, after browsing through the list of job-seekers, if they want to contact anyone of them, they will have to pay Rs 500 per job opening, plus a refundable deposit of Rs 300.

To encourage people to recommend and register job-seekers and potentially spinning off a new class of entrepreneurs, babajob pays Rs 200 to the person who filled up the details of anyone selected by an employer. As of now, it has made aware a handful of cyber-cafes in and around Indira Nagar of the potential earning opportunity and redirects many of its job-seeker inquiries to such places. In addition to rewarding the persons and agents who fill up the forms, it also pays Rs 100 to anyone who refers a job-seekers to babajob. Both strategies are tailored to get around the handicap of the low-skilled workers’ twin handicaps - lack of awareness about online opportunities and when aware, lack of access to the medium.

With the pay-out or shared model, Sean sees the platform growing into more than just an online phenomenon, with benefits being shared by the downstream partners such as cyber-cafes and field workers. “Internet is just an aspect of it.. perhaps the interface with the ultimate customer. But a lot of other things are required to make it work. For example, it depends on telephone connectivity, because the job-seeker has to be accessible to a potential employer. Also, once someone becomes aware of babajob, he must be provided assistance to get himself registered,” he points out.

Since the jobs are usually in-house, the need for security and trust-worthiness limits babajob’s ability to directly reach out to job-seekers and sign them on. The firm, however, has a field staff of around 6 people who distribute fliers and cards and try to get around the difficulty of getting known people by maintaining a list of former employers and other references.

Sean feels building a well referenced job-seeker database is going to be his biggest challenge, not getting people to pay Rs 500 to hire someone. “We have only around 1,700 people now... I am waiting for the day when we can have at least 5,000 potential employees and then go to market and say, yes, I have so many people that you can hire..”

The site is currently in beta mode, with employer charges waived off. “I don’t think finding enough people willing pay Rs 500 to hire someone is going to be the problem. There are many people, especially those who have shifted into the city from outside, desperately trying to find someone to take care of their child or their old parents,” he points out, “Even now, when we have written on the website that it is free, around 100 out of the 750 employers who registered with us have paid.”

Presently, the three owners - Sean, Ira and Vibhore - do not draw salaries, while the remaining operations cost around Rs 2 lakh a month. Having been with Microsoft for eight years, Sean is depending on his savings to see the company through, besides some help from Ira. He has also sold his house in the US recently and expects the monthly expenditure to stabilize around Rs 5 lakh after he recruits more people to spread the word.

Meanwhile, media coverage has ensured that people from far flung corners of Bangalore are trying to get employees from the database, even as the database is still being formed. Sean says they have said no to external funding offers so far, including from many of the top VCs and angel investors in the country. “If it’s just money, then we don’t need it now... So, I ask them, why is your money better than ours?” he says.

While it is too early to talk of lessons learnt, Sean says the project is finding it difficult to cope with the expectations raised. “We thought we could do one neighborhood at a time, but that was a mistake.. it is difficult keep things to a neighborhood on the internet,” he jokes, “We have had people from London calling us and asking, when are you coming to London!”

As of now, everybody is waiting to see what happens as site shifts into the pay mode by late November. Sean and Vibhore are also working on creating babajob applications that will run on top of other social networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook, to take advantage of the large user-base that these platforms offer.

“I would say there is another six months before we finalize the business model, there are still some experiments to be done to see what works and what doesn’t. But I would be very disappointed if we haven’t expanded it to at least three more cities by then,” Sean predicts.

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