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India is home to one of the largest blue and grey collar workforces in the world, with millions employed across various sectors. However, the job market for these workers suffers from deep-rooted inefficiencies, according to stakeholders working on ONEST (Open Network for Employment and Skilling Transformation).

The absence of structured employment data, fragmented job ecosystems, and limited visibility of opportunities have left many young Indians stuck in cycles of underemployment. Industry estimates suggest more than 500 million of the 600 million young and aspiring citizens of India do not currently have the means to digitally document their employment details and core skill sets.

“In the context of blue and grey collar employment, people are unable to discover jobs and jobs can’t find people. And hence, in India, we have a classic discovery and mismatch problem,” says Gaurav Gupta, Chief Growth Officer, EkStep Foundation, a nonprofit working on solving large-scale societal problems for India by leveraging open, scalable technologies.

“Even when a potential job is discovered, other details are missing or not articulated in the language that people can understand, such as job description, precise location, and more,” he adds.

According to EkStep, such challenges highlight the wider problem India faces in harnessing its demographic dividend. The foundation believes there is a need to collaborate and innovate towards understanding and addressing the learning and earning needs of the country’s diverse young population.

The open network approach

EkStep believes the solution lies in leveraging the power of open networks, and building a scalable and digital approach towards blue/grey collar employment opportunities so they can be easily uploaded, discovered, and applied for.

The foundation is incubating this effort in partnership with ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) and FIDE (Foundation for Interoperability in Digital Economy).

In line with this, it is working with multiple entities in the employment, hiring, skilling, and technology sectors to release a concept paper highlighting the previously mentioned challenges and areas to innovate to unlock significant social and economic potential.

The paper will also present ONEST’s open digital network approach as an important enabler in solving them.

EkStep is also inviting startups, SMEs, enterprises, industry associations, and other stakeholders to come together for this initiative and work to build a solution on top of ONEST.

Why an open network? Shankar Maruwada, Co-founder and CEO, EkStep Foundation, explains:

“By being part of an open network, organisations and individuals can leverage network effects to unlock multi-sectoral demand and opportunities. An open network could provide increased value for both the providers (in this case, employers) and consumers (in this case, job seekers), as they can benefit from the collective offerings of others within the network.”

Gupta adds, “Businesses can significantly increase revenues and reduce customer acquisition costs by tapping into the network’s reach and resources, without the need to independently market themselves to a wider audience.”

Digitisation, visibility, trust and scale

In solving for blue and grey collar jobs on ONEST, it has identified four areas to address: digitisation, visibility, trust and scale.

First, digitisation seeks to enable seamless hyperlocal job discovery. On ONEST, many platforms can plug in where workers can showcase their skills, preferences and availability through a simple, verified digital resume. 

Also required is digital cataloguing of employment opportunities, especially those offered by MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises).

The next step is visibility, where demand and supply of jobs are made visible by platforms that are plugged into the network, enabling the unlocking of trusted, hyperlocal matchmaking between employers and job seekers.

This way, employers get access to a verified talent pool, optimising hiring cycles, and job seekers get greater visibility into available job opportunities that suit their preferences.

“In the blue/grey collar segment, background verification is costly, repeated, and unreliable. Digital verification can solve this at scale,” says Pramod Varma, CTO, EkStep Foundation, and former Chief Architect, Aadhaar and IndiaStack.

“When educational/skill records along with work experience can be made digitally verifiable like a digital resume, given in the hands of individuals, it builds credibility and significantly reduces cost. This is one of the key areas ONEST is focusing on to drive inclusive innovation,” he adds.

The final area to build for is scale. ONEST’s open network model allows third-party players to come on board and integrate seamlessly, expanding their reach.

According to EkStep, the pilot phase revealed that the open network approach has the potential to reduce the costs and time for finding and verifying leads by 70-80%, and can possibly unlock significant revenue generation possibilities for network players.

Post its pilot phase, ONEST is now scaling on ONDC and helping network players discover demand and fulfil it in a direct, efficient way.

EkStep reported that some partners with experience in employment and skilling are engaging strategically with it around solving for the challenges in question, and bringing in relevant innovations.

A series of such innovations along with problems that the ecosystem is solving for will be unveiled through subsequent events and workshops hosted in collaboration with ecosystem partners in the coming months.

EkStep is also inviting those interested in this movement to join the network here.