Exclusive Interview with Annanya Sarthak, Co-founder and CEO, Awign

Founded in 2016 by IIT Ropar alumni Annanya Sarthak, Gurpreet Singh, and Praveen Kumar Sah, Awign is India's largest tech-led on-demand work fulfillment platform. Since its inception, Awign has been solving the problem of unemployment, underemployment, and skill gap in India by providing employment opportunities to the youth, along with upskilling them with relevant knowledge. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Annanya Sarthak, Co-founder and CEO, Awign.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers

Founded in 2016 by IIT Ropar alumni Annanya Sarthak, Gurpreet Singh, and Praveen Kumar Sah, Awign is India's largest tech-led on-demand work fulfilment platform. Since its inception, Awign has been solving the problem of unemployment, underemployment, and skill gap in India by providing employment opportunities to the youth, along with upskilling them with relevant knowledge.

In Sanskrit, Awign means the removal of obstacles, and by staying true to its name, the company is committed to developing a unique model of commoditizing work that is revolutionizing how enterprises operate and scale up today.

We work closely with enterprises to meet business requirements through our 9 core on-ground and digital enterprise functions including auditing, diligence, assessments, proctoring (online & offline), last-mile delivery, new business development, and telecalling. Our most recent addition, Awign Expert, was launched in 2021 that helps businesses hire, assess, and manage high skilled contractual and gig talent across niche profiles of tech, marketing, finance, data science, and human resources. Our clients come from a wide range of sectors including FMCD, BFSI, ECommerce, Consumer Durable, Mobility, Assessment, Retail, Hospitality, Retail and Construction, among others.

In the last 6 years, Awign has successfully completed over 7 million tasks with a gig workforce of over 1 million. We now serve enterprises across 500+ cities and 12,000+ pin codes in India including 8 Tier-I cities, 76 Tier-II cities, and several Tier-III cities.

Our no-code technology platform assists enterprises to run their businesses at scale through end-to-end management and outcome-based execution, including discovery, deployment and payroll management. Through this platform, we ensure that any workflow in the world can be configured without writing a single line of code, thereby making us a go-to execution partner that solves core business challenges for enterprises through gig partners.

What sets Awign apart is that, in the land of various job boards and recruitment platforms (Flexi staffing and Job-Board Gig-Marketplace), we've established ourselves as the only platform commoditizing work for Enterprises with the main objective of 'gigifying' core enterprise activities to variabalise PnLs for large organisations.

As a technology-led company, we've diversified into digital lines of business, such as content operations and exam proctoring, in global markets like the United States and the Middle East, to maintain a balanced mix of distant and hyperlocal work segments. We've also planned to expand into new verticals including SaaS, Collections, Retail Operations, Merchandising, Warehousing & Mid-mile, Market Intel & Consumer Insights, and Consumer Product Testing, Micro and Nano Influencer Marketing, and AI Operations, and On-Demand Knowledge.

Since its commencement, Awign has grown to become a company with annual recurring revenue of over INR 120 crore, while bridging the gap between what businesses want and what Indians can do. We have raised funding from marquee investors such as the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Unitus Ventures, Lumis Partners, Work10M, Eagle10 Ventures, Blacksoil, and Stride Ventures and are in the process of soon closing a large Series B equity transaction.

2. What is the edge your company has over other players in the industry?

Awign has several differentiators that have made it stand out such as:

• Our no-code technology-enabled platform breaks down complex work requirements of enterprises into simple tasks and takes ownership of end-to-end work execution – while providing economic opportunities to India's burgeoning workforce across low, mid, and high skilled job sectors
• Our enterprise solutions enable enterprises to convert their 3rd party fixed payroll to variable expenses
• The business model focuses on cutting down revenue leakages for enterprises. Our platform reduces upfront risks and incremental costs in turn variabalizing PnL and increasing bottom lines for our clients
• Our pan-India presence across 500 cities and 12,000+ pin codes in India have attracted 100+ large-sized marquee enterprises to partner with us
• We provide on-demand work fulfillment for both on-ground and digital work, across 9 core business services such as tele-calling, online proctoring, content & data operations, and business development, auditing, due diligence, exam invigilation, and last-mile delivery etc. with over 100+ major (business) customers to service and an over 1 million registered gig partners on the platform
• Our most recent addition, Awign Expert, was launched in 2021 that helps businesses hire, assess, and manage high skilled contractual and gig talent across niche profiles of tech, marketing, finance, data science, and human resources.
• We have also launched our upskilling platform Awign University, an industry-first initiative that aims to provide upskilling, reskilling and multiskilling opportunities to gig partners. Through this platform, gig partners will get access to new learning opportunities which will enable both professional and financial growth for them.

3. How is your company helping customers deliver relevant business outcomes through the adoption of the company's technology innovations?

Awign was started with the mission of organizing & fulfilling enterprise work digitally with human aspirations & humanized efforts. We are a pioneer in connecting technology with the gig economy where we have helped to 'gigify' core enterprise activities and variables PnLs for large organizations.

Our biggest strength is our unrivaled tech stack where we utilize Big Data in allocating tasks to our partners and leverage AI & ML in executing automated Quality checks (Image recognition and audio transcription). As a no-code tech platform, we provide services of finding the gig partners, mapping them to the work, managing them, and getting quality outcomes for the enterprises. Through our tech-driven platform, we are able to meet the partner requirements by breaking them down into simpler tasks and providing end-to-end solutions, training, guidance, and transparent payment systems.

Our fully configurable tech platform enables the productization and execution of all workflows, irrespective of complexity, to address the exact business need. Our execution app for our gig partners, a dynamic dashboard for enterprises, innovative technology, along with our 'war room' for the product management team, together with help us deliver core functional work at scale.

4. How is your tech infrastructure different from and more impactful than your competitors?

4. How is your tech infrastructure different from and more impactful than your competitors?

The foundation of Awign is built on a holistic approach toward enterprises and gig partners. For gig partners, our technology infrastructure has made finding work easier, seamless, and transparent in terms of growth & remuneration. As for enterprises, it has empowered them to achieve outcomes without breaking backs on the 'how' of it. 

Our no-code tech stack ensures work is fulfilled flawlessly as our overall process becomes efficient due to automation & smart-assist features built into our platform. Our gig partner's app is designed to make the journey smooth for the latter, right from applying for a job to finding work based on their skills,location, and other eligibility factors, in-app training, task completion, and payment, technology integration ensures a simplified process. Additionally, for enterprises, our client dashboard provides multi-city, real-time visibility and on-ground insight.

Owing to our technology-first approach, recurring work which is core to enterprises is getting increasingly done through our dynamic gig workforce as opposed to just transactional, short-term, project work. And this is only possible through our technology which has enabled end-to-end workflow management.

5. What's your vision for the future of your work tech platform?

Our growth priorities have always been on the following top-line objectives:

• We have diversified digital lines of business, including content operations and exam proctoring, in global markets such as the United States and the Middle East, in order to maintain a healthy mix of distant and hyperlocal work segments. Earned Soc2 Type 2 certification to provide the required confidence to global customers for handling information security and data privacy regulations
• We are launching our SaaS platform to make the whole ecosystem much better and more convenient for both the businesses and our Gig partners 
• We are also extending our realm in providing skilling, reskilling and multi-skilling possibilities for our gig partners through 'Awign University', which provides:
• Required training and guidance for the registered gig partners to complete their work seamlessly
• Curated courses, content, and other opportunities for our gig partners, giving them an objective to not only earn but learn as well
• Further, we have recently launched a new vertical named Awign Experts. With Awign Expert we plan to tap the white-collar market and gigify professional roles which require experience and expertise. 
• In addition to these, we are going hyperlocal by onboarding 120,000+ Awign champions to achieve 300,000,000+ tasks per day and reach a 12X growth in revenue and more than 95 percent platform adoption by clients, suppliers, and internal teams, by 2025.