PUNE: In the aftermath of demonetisation, a Pune-based entrepreneur has designed a mobile application to ensure household help, drivers, cooks and nannies get their monthly salaries with little trouble.
Amid the ongoing cash crunch, people have found it exceedingly difficult to pay their employees. While many have opted for bearer cheques, some have offered to pay them in kind.
‘Serv’d’ was developed by
Jatin Agarwal
last month. With more than 100 downloads so far, it is gaining traction among people from different cities, including Pune and Mumbai.
“Employers just need a mobile phone, an Aadhaar card and a bank account. It is very easy to upload the relevant information. We link the Aadhaar to the database and run a check, which helps us get all the information about the user. Then, the user has to input some basic information about their employees, like the nature of work, monthly salary. Once this is done, our call centre will call the employee to verify the information. Once their bank account is validated, one can easily transfer money into their accounts,” Agarwal told TOI.
The application, downloadable on any phone, has four categories — household help (maids), drivers, cooks and nannies.
Agarwal added that Serv’d was becoming popular with downloads by people from different states of the country, like Madhya Pradesh,
Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and cities like Mumbai and Pune. “We had planned to launch the application on January 1, but with demonetisation, we decided that this was the best time,” said Agarwal.
Among the features of the application is a facility for employers to track the attendance of the help, and adjust their salary accordingly.
Agarwal said one of the goals of the application is to empower the employees economically. “They need to be viewed as individual entrepreneurs,” he said, These people work in different households and often see their employers handling smartphones or laptops, and have an idea about mobile apps or online money transfers. We are pretty sure that quite a few of them either have bank accounts or are in the process of opening one. The
app
is easy to download and very user-friendly.”
“Over time, we monitor the employees’ behavioural patterns. This gives them a chance to build a credit history. We plan to initiate the process of giving them loans with easy repayment facilities. If their behavioural pattern is good, through the application, they can get themselves insured too with easy premium payment facilities too,” he said.
This initiative has found favour among users. “Our maid has worked for us for the last five years, and I opened a bank account for her a couple of months back. I will try the application after talking to her,” said Shailja Parveen, a home maker.
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