Construction Tech Startup ‘Project Hero’ building for India’s $63 billion construction labour market has raised $3.2 million (Rs 25.5 crore in seed funding led by Ankur Capital and Omidyar Network India. These funds will be used to scale up technology, get in more talent and expand market presence. In July 2021, ‘Project Hero’ had raised $450K from Titan Capital, Anupam Mittal and Varun Alagh.
Indian labour supply is extremely fragmented with the presence of multiple middlemen. Over 50 million construction workers are still finding work through informal channels or through labour contractors. Many times, these contractors take advantage of lack of transparency to pay lower wages. They also prevent workers from evaluating their skillset and market worth.
Satya Vyas, founder and CEO, Project Hero said, “Due to lack of avenues, labourers rely on these middlemen to find work and manage their earnings. These workers never become a part of a formal workforce because their employment record and payroll record is not formally captured anywhere but only on pen and paper at best. Contractors lose significant time and money due to this existing structure. But with the advent of mobile phone penetration, we feel this can be changed. We also feel a product first approach is the right way to solve these problems.”
Added Krishnan Neelakantan, Partner, Ankur Capital, “The trust deficit among key stakeholders in the industry leads to suboptimal outcomes for all, with workers being excluded from a ‘professional’ experience around their work and career.”
Badri Pillapakkam, Partner, Omidyar Network India said, “In this rapidly digitising world, Project Hero has the potential to create a significant positive impact on hundreds of thousands of workers through better working conditions, transparency, timely payments and greater utilization.”
Currently Project Hero has 4 lakh+ construction workers on their platform and have placed over 3000 workers to projects.
See also: Property title search engine ‘Landeed’ bags Rs 19.5 crore in pre-seed funding
With 16+ years of experience in various sectors, of which more than ten years in real estate, Anuradha Ramamirtham excels in tracking property trends and simplifying housing-related topics such as Rera, housing lottery, etc. Her diverse background includes roles at Times Property, Tech Target India, Indiantelevision.com and ITNation. Anuradha holds a PG Diploma degree in Journalism from KC College and has done BSc (IT) from SIES. In her leisure time, she enjoys singing and travelling.
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