Construction Tech Startup Projecthero's In-app Chat Feature Combats Fraud In Blue-collar Industry Projecthero, a construction tech startup has built a membership-driven professional network for India's construction industry which recently introduced a chat feature in its app to ensure that all communications between workers and contractors take place on the app.
By Kavya Pillai
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Projecthero, a construction tech startup has built a membership-driven professional network for India's construction industry which recently introduced a chat feature in its app to ensure that all communications between workers and contractors take place on the app. In addition to allowing workers to track their conversations, this in-app chat feature will enable Projecthero to monitor all conversations and, consequently, prevent fraudsters from duping unsuspecting construction workers with false promises and fabricated data.
The growing prevalence of job fraud in India's labour supply chain is due to its extreme fragmentation. Over 50 million construction workers continue to find work through labour contractors or other informal means. These contractors, who take advantage of the lack of transparency to pay lower wages, prevent workers from evaluating their skill set and market value. Construction sites do not formalize the workforce or keep employment records because the entire workforce is managed using outmoded methods. Casual employment, ignorance and illiteracy, wage discrimination, irregular work, lack of social security, uncertain working hours, unsafe working conditions, occupational diseases and injuries, improper implementation of labour laws, lack of awareness, and a host of other issues affect construction workers.
The construction industry in India is expected to reach 1.4 trillion dollars by 2025. However, the explosive growth of the construction industry has also resulted in an increase in job fraud in various cities. The rise of social media has allowed deception and swindling to take place on a large-scale basis, as, on these platforms, there is no way to verify individuals.
Often, there is no record of the interactions held between the fraudsters and the workers. Therefore, Projecthero's chat feature serves as a one-stop solution that builds transparency and protects workers. The chat service is stored and monitored regularly. Additionally, there is a dedicated HR manager for the chat, which ensures that no monetary conversation or fraudulent activity happens. The manual HR partner will be replaced by AI tools, which are a work in progress at the moment, to make the chat feature more scalable and efficient.
Satya Vyas, Founder and CEO at Projecthero, said, "As we continue to build and grow our membership-based professional network, we realise tackling job fraud will help us deliver value to many construction workers who have been duped of their hard-earned money with the lure of a job. These fraudsters have been able to get away with this till now because of conversations happening over platforms such as Whatsapp and Telegram, where gullible workers don't find any support or guidance and fall prey easily. Post the transaction, they are immediately blocked, and since the amount of money transferred is not very high on an absolute basis, they are not even able to report this crime. With our native chat, the conversations are strictly monitored and people are blacklisted and removed from the platform if any suspicious activity is observed. We will work with sharing this data with the relevant authorities as well."
Projecthero is a membership-driven professional network for the construction industry, which provides access to jobs, orders, financial services, etc. to its members. Currently, Projecthero has more than 4 lakh construction workers on their platform and has placed over 3000 workers on projects. Projecthero was founded by Satya Vyas, Pukhraj Grewal, Raghu Chopra, and Sidhant Panda – all IIT Roorkee graduates. Since the fundraising of $3.2Mn from Ankur Capital and Omidyar Networks, Projecthero's team has continued to expand and grow, with IIT Roorkee graduate Sidhant Panda (ex-Google) joining the team as Co-founder and CTO.
