Captech Technologies, one of India’s first multi-lingual construction tech platforms was launched during the lockdown when major labourers lost their jobs. The app aims to help bridge the gap between labourers and contractors and create more job opportunities. Captech is a Capacit’e Infraprojects Group associate company. Asutosh Katyal, Founder and CEO, Captech Technologies explains to Rajneesh De, Consulting Editor, APAC News Network how their recently launched, “eFORCE”, will help in bridging the gap between general contractors/project developers, migrant labour contractors & specialized vendors.
How technology can revolutionize the construction industry?
The way Technology is playing a vital role in every human life in this era, this will not only be going to change the work of human life but it will change the life of the construction sector too. Technology has changed the world in different sectors but it also created great impact on construction too.
The way the Technology is progressing on a daily phase has empowered the industry to advance the customer experience at various touch points. In today’s world the construction companies are depending on technology to solve the problem they are facing on a daily basis as technology has transformative power and resolves the problem alike transparent salary, skilled worker shortage, work safety and many more.
How can Captech Technologies vibrant workforce revolutionize the infra sector?
As we know the current situation and the way unanticipated delays are happening on a daily project life cycle and to overcome it, we have to be clearer about our workload and to gain momentum. As of now the work is full-fledged in the construction company and we have to started garnering the labours and need to be constantly dedicated to contractors and fulfilling their needs.
As with an efficient team, the way we are committed to work helps us to finish the good quality project on time and the task of getting the skilled labours and unskilled labours to provide to the industry is also handled in a well organised manner. We are not stopping here and our main focus is to invest in advanced technology which will be relevant to the sector and app based digital platforms. We always want our stakeholders to be benefited from developers to general contractors to subcontractors by our efficient work and we at Captech are always ready to rebuild faster and make a strong supply chain.
What are the solutions and services in the Captech portfolio?
Construction is the second largest employer in India and we help developed to find project specific Labour contractors and supplying Generic or Specialized Skills labourers, this enables contacting registered Labour contracts, who can meet the requisitions and real time Transparency to Labour Contractors on Payment amounts, flow and frequency. All these solutions are provided in multiple languages available on the platform.
How technology can become a boon for India’s skilled and unskilled migrant labour/ workforce?
We need to have faith in technology and we have to move with the world and adopt the technology as soon as we can to make our life easy. Through technology, getting any type of jobs will be easy and specially for skilled and unskilled labourers more opportunity will come and that also in different cities.
Through technology the construction companies are finding it easy to get skilled workforce and through this it will assist to bridge the gap between general contractors/developers. This will not only get a job for laborers but this will also create a new job opportunity for people around the industry and this will take it to the next level in upcoming years.
What was the idea behind launching this platform? How is it going to help the laborers, contractors, real estate players?
In India, construction companies find it difficult to get skilled labourers and unskilled on time due to which the work has been delayed and many projects have been delayed due to this. Even today the issue of labour incompetence and shortage of labourers in the construction industry remains significant and prevalent which have impacted the industry reputation badly by not completing the things on time.
After a couple of years working in the construction industry and how the ecosystem in India works in this sector, I realised it will require a drastic change in the industry and feel there are engineering challenges faced by the sector. At that time, I felt that we have to bridge a gap between the developers/general contractors. This will bring them together and will make them work together and will bring faith on each other and this will boost easy flow of labours. At this time, I felt I could bring to end the long-distance gap between laborers, contractors and real estate players by launching the app-based platform to provide a one stop solution.
How is “eFORCE” going to revolutionize the industry? How does this technology work?
‘eFORCE’ is a platform which is Made in India for India and is the revolutionizing for the construction industry in more than many ways, it is multi-lingual mobile application on the Google Play store and Apple app store through which general contractors and developers are matched to the “right-fit” list of subcontractors and labour contractors which will assist them to finish their projects quickly.
eFORCE is such a platform which provides employment to the labour contractors and subcontractors on regular basis which have reduced the seasonality issue of labour in India by 25%, and helps general contractors boost their profit margins by 25%. The platform helps both parties to work together and this will allow the general contractor to solve their issue fast by virtually digitizing.
What are going to be your key focus areas for the next few quarters?
In over 18 months since our inception, e-FORCE platform has deployed over half a million labour via thousands of general contractors registered on our platform from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. The platform intends to organize the unorganized migrant and non-migrant labour contractor market in the construction industry and help developers mobilize the projects quickly and mitigate the delays in projects. With the construction industries’ abundant potential and companies are looking forward towards implementing digitization, and innovative technologies.
Next quarter is crucial for us as the economy has opened up post the lockdown and we are seeing quick revival in the construction sectors. Considering we are the largest labour market place the idea is to add on our contractor base both general and labour and reach the new potential market in the country in coming months.
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