Ants Consulting : Business plan

Abstract

Indian Economy is experiencing a very high growth rate over last few years. This growth has created many opportunities for people such as access to better health services, better lives and employment. Though, many feel that rural population is not able to ride on these opportunities. At one side, rural population struggles to find employment; on the other side various employers are not able to hire semi-skilled and unskilled employees as per their needs despite their availability in huge number. India has total workforce size of approximately 460 million, out of which 420 million is only in informal sector. The largest numbers of informal workers are in Agriculture. In the non-agricultural sector, retail trade, construction, land transport, textile, hotels etc see the highest numbers of informal employees. On one hand, several placement agencies and job-portals are dedicated to skilled and educated job seekers and assisting organizations to tap this workforce. The employers in informal sectors struggle to have organized access to huge manpower comprising semi-skilled and unskilled workers despite of their availability in large numbers, on the other hand. Having realized the need to provide organized access to such workforce, Ants Consulting, already operating in 5 states, is planning to launch an online job portal dedicated to employment at semi-skilled and unskilled level. This job portal will be a unique solution providing job opportunities to large rural population and less educated urban population across various states of India. It will create a cost effective channel to bring potential employers and employees together to fulfil their needs. The major challenge in providing this solution is reach of job seekers across large geographical in a cost effective manners. As these people are on constant move and change job frequently, it becomes quite important to update the profiles regularly. Ants could leverage its past relationship with State governments and other organizations to gain access to this workforce. Portal will generate major revenue from large scale employers and medium scale employers by offering them recruitment services. Based on current and past performances of various companies in similar sector, the investment in portal would breakeven in 3rd year of its operation with mean cumulative cash flow of about Rs. 40.38 million. Scenario analysis suggested that under conservative scenario, mean cumulative cash flow could decrease a bit to Rs. 36.82 million, but the business still rides on very high chances of success. The strong management team of Ants Consulting, currently headed by an IIM A alumnus, already has immense experience in dealing with rural population, and state governments. This could provide an added advantage to resolve any issues coming in its normal business operations. Their passion and commitment to provide sustainable livelihood to rural people is well suited for the success of their online job portal business.