KOCHI: You go for a job interview and come back with an idea to start a company. This is what exactly happened in the life of 24-year old Binto Mathew, co-founder of Piravom Technolodge incubated startup Afbin. After passing out from Sree Narayana Gurukulam College of Engineering, Kadayiruppu, Binto went for an interview at Nest Infotech at Kalamassery. As many as 2000 aspirants turned up to fill 100 vacancies. The company interviewed first 100 people and asked others to submit resumes.
“I sensed an opportunity there. To fill a few number of posts many companies have to go through so many resumes. It consumes time and conducting interviews is also a costly affair. If there is a mechanism where companies with similar requirements form a consortium and conduct tests all over the state and recruit people according to the scores, it would be better. The idea struck my mind and along with my friend Afsal, we started Afbin-by joining first letters of our names,” Binto Mathew narrates the story of his startup.
The company was started in August 2015 and later Afbin was incubated at Technolodge. The company’s first product is a website, www.forajob.in, a platform for job seekers and companies. But from idea to launch the startup was a long journey.
“We needed money to launch the website. I was studying at Ilahia College of Engineering and Technology, Muvattupuzha. We used to see many educational institutions distributing notices to students. Most of these notices were thrown away by the students. One side of these notices are always blank. As every student needs to keep the syllabus of each semester with them. They always take printout of the syllabus. We thought of printing the syllabus on the side of the notices distributed by the companies. The institutions only need to bear the cost of printing. We have distributed these notices to over 5000 students in 18 colleges in Ernakulam district and raised Rs 40,000 to launch our website,” said Afsal C A, who is from Aluva. Finally the website was launched in February this year.
Forajob.in is a job site which is absolutely free to view and apply for job. In simple terms it is the local version of Naukri.com.
“Within four months, we attracted as many as four lakh visitors. Our facebook page (Avasarangal) was liked by over 13,000 users. We give job information through whats app broadcasting for 30,000 contacts and also broadcast job information through email,” claims Binto. The duo is all set to launch the new avatar of the website by December this year. Initially 30 companies were willing to recruit through the website and received around 6000 resumes.