Interviews

Kishore Beniwal & His Venture — Just Jobs Helping SMBs and Startups With Blue Collar Hiring. Learn How!

There’s no denying that Online Job Portals have made the process of job search or hiring a lot easier than what it was. One has 24/7 access to vacancies across industries, functions, levels and geographies at a click of just a button. Just think of how many hours (probably days) and efforts one would have to spend on offline activities like newspapers, advertisements, cold calls and walk-ins to get or change a job! Similarly for an employer, they can receive a huge no. of applications for a job vacancy in just few hours without spending a hefty amount in any advertisement or on a consultancy.
However, while 90% of India’s workforce i.e. approx. 600 million people belong to Informal Sector of the Economy, still only 1% of the available online job boards are catering to solve the hiring problem in this sector.

The other 99% of job boards are catering to the formal (white collar) sector of the economy. But real problem isn’t this, these people belonging to informal sector are even exploited by the middlemen in name of providing jobs to them, they are overcharged, the conventional methods are inefficient as sometimes one has to wait for months without a penny in his/her pocket to get a (new) job. This situation gave Kishore Beniwal the idea of Just.Jobs who wanted to create an online job board exclusive to the blue collar sector but as good or useful as a formal job sector job board.
Meanwhile due to revolution in the mobile industry with introduction of so many cheap or affordable smartphones and falling of internet prices after launch of JIO, people belonging to BOP (Bottom of Economic Pyramid) or Blue Collar Sector such as Drivers, Delivery Boys, Maids, Cooks, Peons, Carpenters etc. can afford to connect with anyone using a smartphone and internet or make other use of it. Wow, what Kishore visioned in 2015 with the idea of Just Jobs now can be a revolution with such big changes in the industry or economy. It can actually solve the problem of connectivity between a job seeker and employer from an informal sector of the economy. Yes! Just Jobs is one of the first job portal that is trying to create direct connection between an employer and job seeker from blue collar sector through a digital platform.
Today we are presenting an Interview of Kishore Beniwal who is the CEO & Founder of Just Jobs, Lets See how Kishore & His venture Just Jobs is helping young startups, SME & Large corporates as well as million of prospective people in our country.
1. What is the Name of Your Venture? Any specific reason for this name?
Just Jobs​ — ​ The name itself justifies what it stands for. It clearly states the purpose and mission behind our venture, i.e. “We’re all about jobs”. And thankfully we got this premium domain — ​www.just.jobs

2. Who is your target Audience/clients?
Every job portal has 2 different types of audience – However, in our case… Jobseekers are from the BoP (​bottom of economic pyramid​) of India – the ones who are often deprived, underpaid or are looking for a better blue-collared job in a field of their interest. We offer a job portal for delivery boys, drivers, beauticians, cook, tailor, waiter, sales & marketing people etc.
And on employers side; we mainly serve small to medium sized businesses, startups, even some big firms who need to hire for lower grade jobs. The recruitment process is very easy for employers as they can easily scroll through the available applicants as per their location.
3. Where is your venture based (city, state, country) & What are your geographical target areas?
Just Jobs is headquartered in New Delhi, India.
Just Jobs is a platform that bridges the gap between the right job opportunities with the right talent. We as a job portal, are however focusing on the tier I & II cities of India, which include- New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Pune, Gurugram, Noida, Chandigarh and others.
4. What problems does your venture resolve? What are your products or services?
Just Jobs is a mission-driven venture by Kishore Beniwal, CEO. Due to lack of appropriate jobs and connectivity to opportunities in the informal or rather unorganized sector, people belonging to this sector face major challenges to find new jobs or the right job. Moreover, jobseekers go to the traditional job consultancies or agencies which often extract a huge sum off their pockets and are often not satisfiable.
Just Jobs is designed to eradicate such challenges that exist in this sector. It is one-of-a-kind fully-featured job portal, that exclusively serves blue collar jobs sector.
5. Share the idea or story behind the venture. How did it came to an existence? What motivated you to start your own venture?
Just Jobs is a brainchild of Kishore Beniwal (Founder and CEO) who wants to bring massive change in semi-skilled and skilled worker job sector, by organizing the sector. He explains, “I had worked as a construction labor as well as a waiter for almost 4 years. Having worked in an informal work environment and tough conditions, I understand the requirement of such a platform. I have experienced the life of an informal worker and know that to most of them, the future seems desolate. Due to the lack of appropriate jobs and obliviousness to underlying opportunities in the segment, they seem clueless about how to move up in their career without losing any sleep. The insignificant level of education also doesn’t help much.”
He added, “I was never meant to do the regular 9 to 5 job. It was my dream to do something that is not only challenging but also helps to create something beneficial for the society. It was this urge to face the music of entrepreneurship that led me to
kick-start this novel business model.”
6. Who are your biggest competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
Thankfully, we are in a market where the idea is already validated. But unfortunately, existing players or as we think, with due respect, are finding it hard to add any value to the lives of people from this sector. Some are still following the practices of the traditional offline agencies/consultancies. That we feel is not good enough. However, we consider Quikr Jobs​ & ​Aasaan Jobs​ as our healthy competitors.
Just Jobs is not just another traditional & complex job board. We regularly update the platform and it is incredibly easy, and in fact, the fastest and the most reliable job board when it comes to the recruitment & hiring within the informal sector of blue-collared jobs India.
Unlike others, we also take a lot of care when it comes to the data privacy. We strictly do not sell off our database for quick bucks, at Just Jobs, we consider it our onus to solve the actual problem.
Just Jobs is committed to make the experience of finding the right job as easy as possible without compromising any aspect of the overall selection process, and fast. As a matter of fact, it has heavily invested on the web-portal’s UX considering the current needs of the industry.
7. How did you identify your co-founder? Tell us something about your co-founder/s.
The qualities or skills what I was looking for in a person to be my co-founder (and these qualities or skills are extended to our whole team) are:
● Smarter with different skill set in comparison to mine. There is no point if two person have the same skill set, I wanted to make a diverse team, not a competition ground for each other.
● Different thought process and perspective to things as compared to mine just to get that “second-opinion” as a startup need to be diligent about every step since the start.
● The last quality I was looking for was 100% believer in our business idea and full input. Here we all needed to be on the same page so that when the going gets tough, we all could put in extra efforts required to make things work & keep moving forward in the right direction with the requisite passion.
Below is a small brief about us:
Me – Kishore Beniwal (CEO & Co-Founder)
A “believer” with clear and inspiring thoughts. Have started “Just Jobs” in Aug 2016 with a clear vision – organize the unorganized, to create a platform where India’s most unserved or underserved people majority can connect with the right opportunities for the better utilization of their skills and hence better life.
My Co-Founder – SR Madhukar (CFO & Co-Founder)
Highly self-motivated guy focused on operation & financial issues within the organization. He believes in learning something new every day.
8. How did you hire your first team members? What skills Do you want in your employees/team?
We started off as an IT firm with a forte in design. We started a company named “Intense Interactive”, a digital agency in 2008 and since then, it has been a successful business. We’re a team of 15 people as of now. As part of our future vision, the staff which is currently looking after the operation of Intense Interactive would transit over to working in Just Jobs and would eventually move totally over to it when we reach in a position where we could say “no” to any new client and be able to sustain ourselves entirely with the revenues from the job portal we built.

Our greatest asset is our team carrying years of experience in the hr and recruitment field. They are highly motivated and ensure that Just Jobs reaches new heights in near future.
Learn more about us here: https://www.just.jobs/company
9. What expansion plans are you looking for the next 2 years, next 5 years?
Through Just Jobs, it is our sincere endeavor to offer an optimal medium for startups as well as small & medium size businesses to streamline their workforce hiring.
We consider it as our onus to empower the currently unorganized and rather underdeveloped sector of blue collared workers in India. We aim to do so, by bringing together skill and opportunity on a single platform.
Presently, we are focused to spread our business in 15 big cities of India. Moreover, we also see the potential of our business in overseas countries like Australia, UK, US and other countries and soon will set up business there.
10. Where do you want to see yourself in next 10 years?
We see Just Jobs as the most preferred, trusted and respected organization in blue collar jobs sector on a global scale.
11. What are your goals over the next 1, 3, 6 and 12 months?
Currently, our main focus is to gather maximum user feedback for continuous improvement. We’re working hard to make it easy to use and reliable as a jobs platform for the blue collar sector as fast as humanly possible. Our goal is to make a complete mobile first business environment, making our job seeker app more intuitive, release a dedicated app for employers, and launch Just Jobs in Hindi and other regional languages; wherein both employers and job seekers can connect with each other within seconds and for free, anytime, anywhere.
12. Have you raised any funding? Or have any plans for the funding?
Just Jobs is a proudly bootstrapped company. We have chosen to be bootstrapped till now & may continue to stay for a year more. Every entrepreneur should know that equity is the most expensive form of capital (A simple Google search will delve into the details of the same). The larger your scale, the cheaper your equity fund-raising gets.
Bootstrapping allows us a lot more freedom in decision-making and more scope to follow our own instincts with advice from just an in-house small core team. The focus is also directed towards one clear goal and there is no interference from investors who might have conflicting visions. Having said that, we’re also open to seeking to invest in our startup who could see our vision and holds a similar opinion as our team.
13. What were the problems you faced during the starting days and how did you resolve them?
Like every other startup, we faced similar hurdles in our growth. In the initial stage, we didn’t generate much revenue which really disheartened us. We want to become a product company, which wasn’t an easy task due to strong market competition.
However, we proceeded ahead and with the help of our experienced staff, we gained momentum in building a strong product. We gained new clients and sustained with the revenues from the product we built.
However, we saw that there are few flaws in our future plan which needed to be worked upon. Moreover, running a bootstrapped company isn’t an easy thing. But we did our best in working hard.
14. What was the most challenging part of your journey till now? How did you overcome those challenges?
We expected a huge traction during the initial months of the launch, thinking that both employers and employees would be looking for such a platform and our prayers would be answered soon as we are trying hard to solve the real issue, by connecting skill with the right opportunity.
Our first customers were only our friends and it took us 3 prolonged weeks to get our first genuine customer from Gurugram. It took a lot of sleepless nights to reach the stage we are now.
To cope with the less transactions, we introduced a freemium model where employers get to post the first job for free of cost. Thereafter, employers posting more than one job are required to pay as less as Rs. 90. And as of now we have reached a pretty good number of employers reaching us for posting their job requirements.
15. Are you married, single or in a relationship?
Single, my ventures keeps me very busy
16. What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Reading, Travelling & a Foody.
17. Whom do you consider your idol or biggest motivator?
I admire Late Sh. Dhirubhai Ambani, who was the real entrepreneur and did a tremendous job founding Reliance Industries.
18. What do you feel is the major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else?
Both are important, we cannot have all entrepreneurs, it should be good combination of both. And, what a person expecting out of his life, his/her goals and change s/he wants to bring matters more than how they are doing it. Entrepreneurs create industries, but we need motivated task force too, for the company to sustain and develop.
19. If you had the chance to start your career over again, what would you do differently?
Nothing! My journey has been good so far. I’m looking forward, not backward.
20. How has being an entrepreneur affected your family & Social life?
When you’re an entrepreneur, it’s really hard to draw a line between work and personal life. My work sometimes demand me to ignore some of my family events, unintentionally.
21. Anything, you would like to say to our readers or upcoming entrepreneurs?
Keep your dreams alive. The urge to achieve anything, small or big, you need to put in hard work, persistence and common sense. And above all, love.
22. What is your USP which makes it unique & different from other start-ups in similar domains.
One of the unique things about our product/service is its exclusiveness for unorganized jobs sector. Providing the modern recruitment software after investing heavily on it’s UX, we ensure a hassle free process for both job seekers and employers. It also allows faster results compared to the conventional methods.
We don’t compromise with the quality of our work and ensure to be reliable for long term business relationships.
We’re a value driven company which strongly believes in our motto. Instead of being conventional, we believe in organizing the process by adding value to the current ecosystem. We’re in this business for more than “quick bucks”. We really want to solve a problem of masses over here.
23. What do you think is the biggest threat to the success of small businesses and Startups today?
The biggest threat a startup faces is themselves. One must give his/her heart & soul to build a business from scratch.
24. Do you consider yourself successful and by what means do you measure success?
“​ I believe success cannot be fully attained There’s always scope to improve a product or a service. It has different meaning for everyone; for me being successful is not just raise funding for Just Jobs or reach a certain number of clientele or users or a milestone. I believe in the bigger picture, where we could actually make lives of underserved people better by being more than just a job portal, but help them get the job they are actually fit for.”
25. Please share complete name, address, phone number, email id & website of Your Business & Contact Person
Kishore Beniwal
G-45, LGF, Lajpat Nagar – 1, New Delhi – 110024, India.
9899005522
[email protected]
www.just.jobs

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