Nilesh Dungarwal: building recruitment around India’s blue-collar workforce

From technology to a hiring problem

WorkIndia’s public founder material describes Nilesh Dungarwal’s technology background, including work at Credit Suisse and earlier entrepreneurial projects. Co-founded in 2015, WorkIndia brought that experience to a large but fragmented hiring market.

The problem was everyday rather than abstract: workers needed relevant jobs near them, while small businesses needed a more direct route to candidates. Traditional recruitment processes often added time, expense and intermediaries without improving the match.

What WorkIndia changes

WorkIndia positions itself as a blue- and grey-collar recruitment platform. Location-aware discovery and direct employer contact are central to making hiring usable for workers and smaller businesses outside elite professional networks.

Its relevance extends across service and operational roles. Designing for this audience means accounting for language, mobile access and the need to understand the basic terms of a vacancy quickly.

Growth beyond the first market

A January 2024 BusinessLine report described WorkIndia’s expansion, its employer and candidate network, and a target of reaching profitability. The report cited revenue of ₹54 crore in FY23, up from ₹27 crore in FY22. These dated figures describe business growth at that time, rather than the company’s current revenue.

A large recruitment network creates an opportunity to improve matching, but platform totals alone cannot establish how many people found suitable, lasting jobs.

Impact is in the quality of the match

Dungarwal’s story is about applying technology to a hiring process that many workers previously navigated informally. The strongest evidence of impact would be fewer deceptive offers, better matches and jobs that last. WorkIndia’s published mission and reported growth explain the ambition; they do not replace an independent assessment of worker outcomes.