How This Bengaluru Startup's AI Recruiter Is Changing Blue-Collar Hiring

In a nation where millions of people search for improved livelihoods every day, employment continues to be painfully behind the times for most blue-collar workers. That is where Vahan.ai, a Bengaluru startup, comes in, changing recruitment in the background with artificial intelligence—filling the gap between workers and India's thriving gig economy.

Started in 2016 by AI specialist Madhav Krishna, trained at Columbia University, Vahan.ai is today one of the country's largest blue-collar job portals. How did it get here? An AI recruiter that makes the usually disorganized, time-consuming recruitment process easier, linking candidates to roles in large employers such as Zomato, Swiggy, and Flipkart.

"Triples recruiter productivity—from one per day to three," Krishna states. The website now puts around 40,000 employees on the job per month, and over a period of time it has put over 10 lakh employees into jobs in India's major cities.

Vahan's story started with a basic WhatsApp chatbot for upskilling workers. But then the team realized that though upskilling is useful, getting a job is the game-changer. In 2019, Vahan fully pivoted into hiring and joined Y Combinator, supported by Khosla Ventures.

What makes Vahan’s approach stand out is its use of advanced AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, to manage conversations and documentation in both English and Hindi—with plans to expand to eight more Indian languages. The AI recruiter now handles nearly 20,000 calls daily, working to understand the nuances of local dialects and speech patterns. "Even the humble 'haan' can be used 20 different ways in India," Krishna asserts, citing how difficult it is to create technology that truly speaks locally.

For Vahan, AI does not equal replacing human touch but scaling it. In India's very personal employment culture—where a bhaiya or chacha is the first person one approaches for a job—Vahan's model does not rely on the agencies and recruiters but enables them with better tools instead of eliminating them from the picture.

Looking forward, Krishna's vision goes beyond gig economy. Vahan is already expanding into industries such as manufacturing and transportation, with the goal of applying its success to other industries.

In a nation of vast labor potential, Vahan's fusion of AI and human-centered design presents a vision of the future that is positive—one in which technology is an enabler, not a replacement, for good work.