Vahan.ai, which uses artificial intelligence to help companies find gig workers in India, has raised $10 million from investors led by existing backer Khosla Ventures. Other U.S. participants included Y Combinator, Founders Fund, Vermont-based Gaingels, and former and current executives from Google and Walmart-owned Flipkart.
Previous backers include Stanford University alumni fund Spike Ventures, Verizon executive Guru Gowrappan and Kevin Shannon, former chief financial officer of Harvard Management Company.
The company, founded by Columbia University alumnus Madhav Krishna, is based in Bangalore, India. Crunchbase lists its U.S. headquarters as Locust Grove, Va. Krishna received a M.S. degree in artificial intelligence from Columbia University, and worked in the United States for, among others, Jetsetter, which was acquired by TripAdvisor.
“Vahan.ai stands out by not only reducing the effort in repetitive tasks but by providing meaningful, scalable solutions that open doors for millions,” said Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla, who says he has seen first-hand how the company’s innovative approach is redefining recruitment for the blue-collar workforce in India.
Since its founding in 2016, Vahan has reportedly placed over 500,000 workers at delivery firms such as Amazon, Uber, Zomato, Swiggy and Flipkart. So far, it has raised $18 million from venture firms and angel investors.
“We have come a long way from providing 600 jobs a month during the pandemic to 25,000 jobs a month now,” Krishna told Moneycontrol.com. “With our impact growing multi-fold, we are excited to drive positive change and help the youth of Bharat find employment,” he added referring to a local name used to describe India.
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Vahan plans to use the new funding to expand into new verticals such as manufacturing and warehousing, which Krishna claims employs far more people than the gig industry.
“These new verticals can be a lot larger than the delivery segment because while the delivery segment hires about five lakh [500,000] people a month, there are millions and millions of people employed in these verticals. So, over time, they would perhaps even become the lion’s share of our business,” added Krishna.
Vahan’s platform enables automated interviews in English and multiple Indian languages, and leverages the wide reach of WhatsApp, India’s most popular messaging platform. It claims its machine learning technology reduces worker attrition, a key problem in the gig industry.
