Project Hero Raises $3.2 Million in Seed Funding Funds will be utilized to scale up its technology, on-board more talent on the platform, and expand their market presence
By Saptak Bardhan •
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Project Hero on Tuesday announced to have raised $3.2 million in seed funding round led by Ankur Capital and Omidyar Network India. The round also saw participation from marquee angels such as Titan Capital and others. Funds will be utilized to scale up its technology, on-board more talent on the platform, and expand its market presence.
"The Indian construction labour market is highly fragmented and fraught with multiple middlemen in between. They deliver a very bad experience to the contractor and to the labour both. 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. But with the advent of mobile phone penetration, we feel this can be changed," said Satya Vyas, founder and CEO, Project Hero.
The labour supply chain in India is extremely fragmented. Over 50 million construction workers still find work through informal channels or through labour contractors. These contractors take advantage of lack of transparency to pay lower wages and at the same time prevent workers from being able to evaluate their skillset and market worth. Further, the entire workforce at construction sites is managed using obsolete means of management which means that there are no employment records or formalization of the workforce. This eventually leads to frequent attrition and delay in projects due to a drop in productivity for the contractors, according to statement given by the company.
"The trust deficit among key stakeholders in the industry leads to sub-optimal outcomes for all, with workers being excluded from a 'professional' experience around their work and career. By leveraging technology to bring transparency into working hiring and engagement, Project Hero is building a trusted platform that can tap into a large market opportunity," said Krishnan Neelakantan, partner, Ankur Capital.
Before starting Project Hero, co- founders, Satya Vyas, Pukhraj Grewal & Raghu Chopra, all IIT Roorkee graduates, ran a general contracting company for over five years, which is where they experienced the problems of project delays and mismanagement due to labour and sub-contractor related issues firsthand. Currently Project Hero has over 400,000 construction workers on their platform and has placed over 3000 workers to projects.
Previously, the company had raised $450k from Titan Capital, Anupam Mittal and Varun Alagh in July 2021.
