Google has looked to enter several different verticals in India over the last few years, and has been met with different levels of success — it had launched a hyperlocal app for deliveries and home services in 2017 called Areo that now largely lies forgotten, but its entry into payments created quite a splash — Google Pay is now India’s largest UPI app. The company is now looking to enter yet another market that isn’t traditionally considered to be its forte.
Google will soon launch an entry-level job app Kormo. The company has reportedly been undertaking pilots of the app in India since the beginning of this year, and performing ground level research on how entry-level hires were made in different sectors. The app is a part of Google’s Next Billion Users (NBU) unit, which is also responsible for creating Google Pay in India.
Kormo isn’t originally a creation of Google’s India team. It launched in September in its home market of Bangladesh — Kormo means work in Bengali — and was launched in Indonesia earlier this year. Kormo seems to be like any another job portal, and connects employers and job seekers. Its app already has over half a million downloads from Bangaldesh and Indonesia, and has a rating of 4.0 on the Play Store. “It only takes a few minutes to set up your basic profile, and get a beautiful digital CV that you can share, print, or apply directly to jobs listed on the app. If you take the time to fill out your background, experiences, and interests then we’ll match you for relevant jobs – let employers come to you!” its Play Store profile tells users.
Kormo focuses on three sectors of retail, hospitality and logistics, and appears to also make the effort to educate its users to help them get better jobs. The app says that it’ll recommend professional areas in which its users can grow, and also help them create their resumes. It will reportedly help users find jobs which are rarely posted online. The app will be launched in India this Friday.
“Since we launched Kormo in Bangladesh in 2018 and in Indonesia this year, we’ve connected over 50,000 job seekers to jobs from hundreds of employers who use Kormo for their hiring needs, specifically entrylevel jobs,” Bickey Russell, project lead, Next Billion Users, told ET. “Because finding employment is a real need across different markets, we’re looking to bring the same service to countries like India.”
India has no shortage of job portals catering to every kind of job imaginable — there are platforms like IIMjobs which cater to white-collar premium jobs, while services like BabaJob provide employment to blue-collar workers. But Google has, in the past, entered mature markets and still managed to make its mark. When it had launched Tez in India, there were more than a dozen UPI payment platforms already operating in the country, but through a combination of a simple user interface, Google’s brand name, and extremely generous cashbacks, it managed to become India’s largest UPI app. It remains to be seen if it can pull off something similar with Kormo, but blue-collar job portals in the country would do well to be on guard — Google entering a new market can be a harbinger of some serious disruption.