According to a senior executive of Fountain, a provider of hiring automation software for frontline workforces, India is one of the "big hubs" in this industry. The corporation has a physical presence in the United States, Western Europe (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany), South Africa, India, and New Zealand. "The big hubs are India, UK and France," Founder and CEO of the company Sean Behr told PTI
"Fountain focuses exclusively on the blue collar and gray collar workforce. A vast majority of people ... don't ...do PowerPoint or Excel, they do things on the frontlines of our economy," and it's never been harder to find and keep workers in the blue and grey collar sectors, Behr said
Behr said that the blue and grey collar markets in India provide the "most natural place" to invest and flourish.
India, he said, has a larger population and is a "very good place for technology to invest in this market," while China "has some similar dynamics, but obviously there are geopolitical challenges."
Behr noted that while the United States has a population of 330 million, there are more persons in the workforce in India who have a smartphone that can be used to make payments than there are in the entire population of India.
"With 8 million manual informal processes, there is absolutely no way to scale to 25 million workers and still be using manual processes. You need to bring technology that will standardize the process for these workers and it benefits both the worker and actually more importantly... the company."
Rather than relying on "informal, disorganized, spreadsheets - forms and paper," Fountain hopes to implement standardized technical methods.
Using 35 different languages, Behr asserts that Fountain has hired 3 million blue and gray collar workers in 75 countries.
He pointed out that a country like India offers scale and complexity challenges owing to the diversity feature here.
"In Germany, you really only need one language, here that doesn't work. You have to have technology that is smart enough to know that... if I'm recruiting in Karnataka, or Delhi, I may (be) interacting with an applicant (and) need to have the ability to switch languages," he said.
Behr also detailed his plans for an initial public offering (IPO) of Fountain, his fourth company venture after forays into e-commerce, advertising, and the car-hailing industry.
It's a wonderful investment, but it's a few years away for us. It diverts resources from actually expanding the firm to "hire lots of people" and "build all the right financial reporting, legal," he said.
Despite the difficult climate for late-stage companies in which the business raised its Series C round of funding in 2022, it is certain that "there's enough cash in the bank" for the time being.
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