Vocational training and Jobs search platform Junoon, targeted at blue-collared workers in India has raised a seed round from angel investors like Kunal Khattar, Sandeep Aggarwal, Chaim Freidman, Viren Rana, and Vishesh Tandon. The deal size and company valuation are undisclosed and the round is led by Kunal Khattar of AdvantEdge and Tech Entrepreneur and Investor Viren Rana.  

Junoon was launched in April 2020  by 17-year-old entrepreneur Ahaan Aggarwal with a mission to help blue-collar workers unleash their full potential by providing standard and easy to assimilate vocational training and land satisfying jobs. 

Speaking on the investment and the opportunity Ahaan Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, Junoon affirmed “India is the home for the largest number of blue-collared workers in the world. During the lockdown, most of us normalized work-from-home very quickly, I could see that it wasn’t the same for the large majority of unskilled workers across the country. The mass exodus from the urban areas due to extinguished opportunities was horrifying in multiple aspects. I created Junoon to support our workers to come back to the job market by being better trained and give them the ability to easily find opportunities.”

During the pandemic, over 360 million informal jobs were impacted in India, resulting in an unemployment rate of over 23.5%. Junoon also released a research report on the informal jobs sector, that further talks about the eradication of livelihoods, and lack of training and opportunities to upskill for the 500 million labor force in India. Over 93% of the workers in this segment, had never received any vocational training. 

To solve this problem, Ahaan conceptualized and developed Junoon which not only provides training and upskilling programs to workers in over 20 categories but also supports them in finding a sustainable livelihood as per their improved proficiency. The training programs come in both text and video format and also incorporate an AI-based algorithm to match the employer with the right set of skilled candidates.   

Kunal Khattar, Managing Partner, AdvantEdge Founders said, “We have been observing the way this young venture has been leading from the front and believe that it has the requisite vision and execution in place to upskill our blue-collared workers in the country. These people witnessed hand to mouth situations due to no job in the pandemic and now are facing lots of challenges to get back the required Job. The right training will scale the working procedure of these workers. I collaborated considering how the vision is to provide the right set of talent to enterprises too.”    

The need for upskilling has never been more important and in that direction, Junoon’s endeavor to help unskilled workers to learn new skills and become upwardly mobile is timely. How it fares when compared to competitors in the same space remains to be soon.