How Madhav Krishna's Vahan.ai Became India's Largest Blue-Collar Hiring Platform by Using AI Agents

Episode notes

Madhav Krishna's journey from Silicon Valley to solving India's 450-million blue-collar workforce challenge is a masterclass in finding product-market fit. Starting with a voice-based English teacher called Lakshmi in 2016, Madhav pivoted three times before discovering the real painkiller: recruitment, not training. Today, Vahan.ai powers hiring for Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit, and Uber using a unique agency-powered model combined with GPT-4o voice AI that costs just ₹2 per minute compared to ₹3-4 for human recruiters. He shared the complete journey in this candid conversation with host Akshay Datt, revealing why his WhatsApp bot with 500K users meant nothing until he embraced local recruitment agencies instead of trying to disintermediate them. From Y Combinator to backing by Khosla Ventures and Temasek, Madhav explains why SaaS fails in India, how outcome-based pricing became their moat, and why India's trust deficit requires human intermediaries even in the age of AI.

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