Labouradda: Inception and Design

The inspiration of devising a digital crossroad where demand (consumer) makes direct communication with the supply (manpower) came into being as an urge to find a solution to help an undervalued and humongous section of our society. One morning at an ordinary ‘labour mandi’ is what it took to motivate us to hustle for a platform where the dynamics of labourers and customers is simplified and put into order.

Understanding the Dynamics

Regular field trips and face to face interactions with our labourers is what cements the concept of Labouradda

After an extensive field work for over a year, spanning across different cities we got well versed with how the early morning labour-mandis operate and how a daily wage labourer- who migrates to cities looking for work- is entirely dependent on getting ‘picked-up’ by a prospective customer.

The rates are negotiated which, might or might not benefit the labourers or the consumers. If the labourers make the cut, they are hired to work for approximately eight hours per day. This vicious cycle is repeated every day and is laced with unorganised uncertainty.

According to our in-depth survey, these humble daily wagers are the biggest resources that India has and directly contribute to 50% of our country’s GDP.

The prospective employers who come to the mandis looking for man-power also have to abide by the strict mandi schedule and the labour shift duration. In case the consumer fails to arrive at the mandi on time, there is no way they can track the labourers.

Another important thing that we came across was that there is no functional respite for the consumer from the government. Lack of any proper communication channels between consumers and labourers is a major setback to the mandi dynamics. Dearth of any bargain (in terms of money or number of working hours) guidelines is another major downside from a consumers point of view. 

It is unfortunate that this highly potent sector is significantly ‘unorganized’, marred with such momentous issues and is scarcely surviving with a 2% annual growth. Imagine the growth that our country can achieve if we are able to offer guaranteed daily employment to this large population!

Inception of an Innovation

The inception process had our team toiling day and night, working towards paving a design course for our innovation.

Labouradda has shaped up into a unique digital platform that enables direct communication between these daily wage labourers and employers, round the clock, i.e. free of the limitations of time and place. Also, we have devised clear cut wage guidelines keeping the needs of consumer and labours in mind.

Apart from providing a sense of digitized symmetry to the Labour addas, we segmented the labourers into categories including- skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled and cataloged their services for the customers to better access them.

Design Course

Labouradda- aims at resolving issues like communication-gap, unavailability and unreliability for the consumers while at the same time- increasing demand, hours, days and value of employability for the daily wage earners.

Our app based communication channels aim at connecting an unemployed and available labour in the catchment area with the consumer when called through our app.

With our app, we have tried to bring services and manpower to their doorsteps with a few simple steps while registering the labourers in accordance to their skills

We believe that technology will help make this unorganized sector reach its bona fide efficiency and contribute in largely improving the employability and working conditions of the humble daily wagers in India and directly increasing the overall earning capacity of unskilled people leading to an increase to our country's GDP.