Vahan, a Bengaluru-based platform powering jobs, financial services and upskilling for blue-collar workers, has raised $8 million in a Series A round led by Silicon Valley investor Khosla Ventures.

Airtel, Spike Ventures, SHAKTI VC, Pioneer Fund, Vijay Shekhar Sharma (CEO at Paytm), Guru Gowrappan (Group CEO at Verizon Media and former Global MD at Alibaba) and others also participated in the funding round.

As per the startup, the funds will be used to further scale its recruitment business and build new product offerings for its fast-growing customer base. Additionally, the company has long term plans and aims to enable better livelihoods for the next billion internet users.

Vahan | Powering Jobs, Financial Services And Upskilling For Blue-collar Workers

Founded by Madhav Krishna, Vahan is a Bengaluru-based tech startup that helps blue-collar and gig workers find jobs while helping employers find the right candidate. The startup helps companies such as Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, Uber, Shadowfax etc., hire blue-collar workers and is on track to become India’s largest recruitment platform. 

Speaking on the funding round, Madhav Krishna, Founder and CEO of Vahan, said, 

“We will continue to leverage our deep expertise in building large businesses using technology to take the company to the next orbit of growth. Our goal is to ensure that previously underserved blue-collar workers get access to opportunities across jobs, financial services, and upskilling, and our ambition is to make one billion placements over the next 10 years.”

Vahan has built tools, including an AI-driven bot on WhatsApp, used to recruit workers at a large scale and high velocity. It helps save blue-collar workers from exploitation at the hands of middlemen. Additionally, Vahan, through its machine learning-based technology, can reduce worker attrition.

Currently, Vahan places 7000+ blue-collar workers across 200 cities every month in gig-economy jobs.

For more stories of startups, click Startup Stories.

Follow us and connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.