This Startup Is Looking To Bring Techies To Tier 2 Cities To Solve The Talent Crunch

In September 2018, Jyothis KS and Deepu Xavier launched an artificial intelligence startup, ZappyHire, which offered corporates and startups an automated recruitment solution. After ZappyHire’s successful launch, Jyothis and Xavier realised the hurdles were bigger in smaller cities in India when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. And thus was born their next venture, Move2MyCity.

Founded in 2019, Move2MyCity aims to encourage the young talented individuals from across the country to take up jobs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. With this initiative, Jyothis and Xavier aim to showcase how each city is unique in terms of experiences, facilities and job opportunities. And the first city in the campaign is Kochi.

“We are the biggest supporters of uniqueness and diversity and that’s how this campaign started to take form. Every city is unique in its own way and once you start appreciating that, disliking a city becomes difficult,” – Jyothis KS, cofounder, Move2MyCity.

The startup claims to have received over 4K unique visits in the first three weeks of the Move2Kochi campaign, that too with minimal marketing.

Move2Kochi—From Move2MyCity For Kochi

Thanks to the unique idea, Move2MyCity attracted a lot of attention from companies willing to team up for the campaign in Kochi. Some of the most prominent startups from the state such as SurveySparrow, FullContact and CareStack joined the Move2Kochi campaign. The startup is now in the process of selecting the second set of companies for the campaign.

“Unlike other job portals, we promote each company and celebrate their unique success story which in-turn boosts the brand image and creates awareness among job seekers. We adopted the chatbot-based interface for an intuitive job application process. There will be multiple candidate touchpoints during this process to ensure a perfect match between a candidate and a company,” added Jyothis.

Backed by KSUM since its inception, Move2MyCity has enjoyed a lot of benefits, from incubation support to marketing and PR and more. Jyothis told Inc42 that the team at KSUM has worked with the startup, guiding and mentoring it through the different stages of its growth. It was during their time of working with KSUM that the two friends realised the attractions and the opportunities, along with the lack of participation of the job seekers in Kochi.

Soon enough the startup realised that the situation was almost the same in all the other Tier 2 cities in India. With Move2MyCity, the focus is mainly on such smaller cities across the country, the likes of Trivandrum, Pune, Coimbatore and more.

“What makes Kochi attractive to prospective job seekers is the increasing number of companies offering high paid jobs. This benefit, along with several other quality amenities are the reason that we selected Kochi as the first city to kick off the campaign,” added Jyothis.

In just a few months of the Move2Kochi campaign’s launch, the startup claims to have received many applications from both employers and employees to be a part of the campaign. And many of the applicants were people from outside Kerala, which only further acted as the motivation that the startup needed.

According to estimates, on an average, at least 25-30 people migrate every minute from Tier 2 cities to the Tier 1 for better opportunities and lifestyle. Estimates of the Economic Survey of 2016-17 also revealed that from 2013-17, annually around 90 Mn people migrated between Indian states.

Move2MyCity aims to tap into this migration pattern and attract young talent from smaller cities to the metros and show them the opportunities and lifestyle benefits that the cities present.

“We have enabled personalised candidate engagement with chatbots and high accuracy resume parser along with other AI-enabled recommendations engine during the application process. ZappyHire will take care of the rest of the process,” elaborated Jyothis.

Recruiting Top Talent: ZappyHire And Move2MyCity

The HRtech space in India has developed tremendously over the last half-decade and recruiters and companies are only using more and more automation to screen, assess and recruit candidates.

Companies today are digitising their recruitment process and are shifting their focus to online platforms to reduce the turnaround time in hiring.

“The new trends in the HRtech space and hiring processes provide individuals from Tier 2 cities an equal chance and help companies widen their pool of candidates. Our product ZappyHire is going strong there and with Move2MyCity we will now also enable these cities, not just the job seekers,” elaborates Jyothis.

Though the startup has only started with Move2Kochi, it does have plans to go to other cities. With ZappyHire already gaining good traction, it claims that reaching other Tier 2 cities in India is only a matter of time. “We are working on collaborating with different service providers to provide our users with a seamless experience of a new city, apart from providing the best-paid jobs on our portal,” elaborates Jyothis.

To accelerate their expansion plans, it is already in discussion with multiple stakeholders from other cities. Apart from leveraging this network and new connections, the team is also taking the help of forums and other social media channels to attract the best tech minds in different cities.

“Over time, relocating to certain cities for a job became the norm. If you chose to move to a city apart from the “usual ones” you could be sure of a million questions coming your way. But time brought changes, as it always does. Every city began to flourish and offer opportunities like never before. Once we realised this, all we wanted to do was spread the word,” Jyothis said.