Bollywood actor Sonu Sood's Pravasirojgar gets Rs 250 Cr funding from Temasek-backed GoodWorker

Pravasirojgar, an online employment portal founded by Sonu Sood has become a joint venture with the initial investment of Rs 250 crore (approximately $33 million) by Goodworker. The portal was founded in partnership with education and vocational skill provider Schoolnet. The joint venture will formally launch in early 2021. Pravasirojgar was founded in July 2020 during the pandemic. GoodWorker is a job matching platform backed by Singapore headquartered investment company Temasek Holdings.

"Schoolnet India (formerly IL&FS Education and Technology Services) is an EdTech and skilling company, which focuses on leveraging the demographic dividend through initiatives related to education, employability and employment", reported PTI. 

Sonu Sood told PTI, "This partnership will help in realising my dream of providing a better life and securing livelihood for millions of youths. With this, we aim to give the migratory workers an opportunity to upskill and improve their job prospects."

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"We were already building and had plans of certain amount of investment in India. When we came across Sood''s Pravasi Rojgar and Schoolnet, and saw how they have reached 400 districts, we decided to combine forces with them bringing in out cutting edge technology to effectively expand their operations by finding the right talent," GoodWorker Board Member Pradyumna Agrawal told PTI.

“I came in touch with a lot of migrant workers during the lockdown and they all had one concern, how to get a job after the lockdown and support their families,” Sood told ET. “With blessing of these workers and their families and other well-wishers, I tried to get the right-minded people and partner with Schoolnet for Pravasirojgar.com.”

“The cutting-edge technology that GoodWorker brings will allow businesses in India to effectively expand their operations by finding the right talent, and also allow workers to have control over their data while widening access to digital products and services. With digital transformation accelerating against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, this investment reflects our optimism towards trends in India that are underpinned by technology and digitalisation,” said Pradyumna Agrawal, founding team member and GM, GoodWorker and director at Temasek.

“Around 40,000 workers are going to join new jobs via the platform, but the demand is going to be huge now that the lockdown has started easing up. We wanted to be ready and scale up the platform to help a much larger population,” Sood added.

“Schoolnet, as a market leader in education and skilling services, along with its deep domain knowledge and execution track record, is uniquely positioned to realise this mission of creating a community of an empowered blue-collar workforce,” said RCM Reddy, MD and CEO, Schoolnet India. “Sonu has been supporting these migrant workers and as they are now looking for jobs, we decided to start the portal. This is expansion of his passion and philanthropic work and our track record.”

“We will provide digitally certifiable identification to 10 crore blue-collar workers with the initiative and link it with upskilling and access to services like finance and healthcare,” Reddy added.