Empowering the hands that build INDIA
Karigaar
01 / 12
The problem
Work finds people by word of mouth.
India's skilled trades find work through a contractor who knows a contractor. It is slow, local, and pays whatever the middleman leaves behind.
Mason
Electrician
Plumber
Driver
Cook
[INSERT: size of India's informal workforce + source]
Karigaar
02 / 12
The insight
The job board was never the
hard part. The sign-up was.
Every existing job platform assumes a literate, typing, English-comfortable user with a resume. The worker this is for cannot comfortably fill in a form.
01
The form barrier
02
No verified identity
03
No reputation that travels
with the worker
Karigaar
03 / 12
The solution
Built by talking.
Karigaar — a two-sided hiring platform for India's skilled trades,
where the worker's profile writes itself from a conversation.
Worker
Find jobs near you
Apply without typing
Get reviewed, build a name
Employer
Post in one screen
Applicants with reviews and a trust score
Hire, then review back
Setu, mid-interview — in Hindi.
Karigaar
04 / 12
Setu = bridge.
A voice assistant that interviews the worker in their own language and writes the profile from the answers.
11
Indian languages, auto-detected
Speak
the worker
just talks
speech-to-text,
auto-detects
the language
Gemini
returns what it
learned this turn —
not a script position
Profile written
fields fill
themselves
Sarvam bulbul:v3
speaks the next
question back
Out of order is fine · language switches are followed · a dropped call resumes
Karigaar
05 / 12
Sarvam bulbul:v3
Two paths, one hire.
Worker
Sign in by phone or Aadhaar
Talk to Setu
Discover jobs near you
Read the employer's reviews
Apply
Employer
Matching workers are notified
Review applicants
Hire
Mark finished — then both sides review each other
Karigaar
06 / 12
Creates profile
Sign in by phone or Aadhaar
Post a job
Innovation 01 — the hold / release engine
Parked, not deleted.
Being hired parks your other applications — nothing is deleted. Cancel the job you accepted and the others come straight back.
Applied
On hold
Rejected
hired elsewhere
post taken
free again
This is the state machine most job boards skip — the difference between a demo and a product.
Karigaar
07 / 12
Innovation 02 — trust you can see
Trust you can see.
Hashed identity
Aadhaar arrives as a SHA-256 hash — the raw number is never stored.
Reviews with receipts
Reviews are two-way and tied to a finished job.
A score you can rewrite
A trust score the worker can rewrite in their own words.
Proof, not invention
Certificates: hand-uploaded, served via short-lived signed URLs.
Holding a raw Aadhaar number is a legal problem in India — so we never hold one.
Karigaar
08 / 12
Under the hood
One app, no backend.
Browser
Next.js 16 — one app
Postgres
The browser can touch nothing.
Server Components read Postgres directly. Server Actions handle every write. All authorisation lives in one server-side session layer.
Row Level Security is on with zero policies — every request is denied at the database by default.
Next.js 16 · TypeScript · Tailwind v4 · shadcn/ui · Zod
TanStack Query · Supabase · Sarvam AI · Gemini · Vercel
Karigaar
09 / 12
Honesty
What's real,
what's simulated.
Real
The OTP is HMAC'd into a signed HttpOnly cookie — 5 minutes, never plaintext.
Aadhaar hashing. The full lifecycle.
23
passing logic tests
Simulated
Only the code delivery — no SMS gateway, no UIDAI licence.
Both need commercial agreements.
Swapping in a real gateway is one function body.
Karigaar
10 / 12
Impact
01
5
minutes of talking
A worker who could never build a profile now has one.
02
A reputation that travels with them.
It belongs to the worker , not to a platform.
03
An employer who can verify who is turning up.
Identity, reviews, certificates — visible before hire.
Karigaar
11 / 12
Karigaar
12 / 12
Team ‘Arc Reactor’