Bengaluru-headquartered OTU ( Organising the Unorganised)–a start-up for blue-collar job seekers, has raised $1 million in a seed funding round. A bunch of investors like Harsh Jain ( founder of Dream 11), Rainmatter Investment, Sangam Textile Group from Bhilwara and Bengaluru's Mittal Steel Group joined the round and invested the amount in the company. 

The company is planning to raise another $5 million in a pre-series A funding round in the coming months. It aims to utilise the funds for customer acquisition and technological advancements. The start-up wants to achieve a one million user milestone in 5-6 months. 

Founded in 2021 by Pratik Maheshwari, a computer engineer from BITS Pilani and Akhilesh Kothari, an investment banker, the company is in the process of tie-up with the NCS portal ( National Career Service), where more than 15 million candidates can directly apply for the OTU jobs, a company statement claims. It has already partnered with NSDC, where candidates who have training from NSDC-affiliated institutions will be informed about the OTU jobs. 

Regarding the latest development, Pratik Maheshwari, CEO of OTU, said, "Currently more than 1,00,000 candidates have already been registered on the OTU portal, and more than 100,000 job vacancies are available. Over 40,000 candidates have already been shortlisted from those potential jobs, and over 10,000 have received job offers.”

Akhilesh Kothari, the other co-founder, added, “We have crossed the initial hurdle of the pilot test at Rajasthan, and after a significant portion of the user base obtained jobs, the team has geared up to serve every individual in the country. Our plan for the first phase of the coming year is to have a major presence in North India - the Hindi-speaking belt in particular and later to go to PAN India."

Vishal Mehta, the CMD of Infibeam Avenue, mentioned that "The scaling opportunity for OTU is immense, and tapping the overall 500 million blue-collar workforce space in India at a time when there is an emergent gig economy, makes it more relevant, which will not only benefit OTU to scale but also democratise and organise the blue-collar workforce in the country.”