MC Interview: We are planning for IPO but before that we shall achieve certain size: Pravin Agarwala of BetterPlace

Blue collar staffing and human resource management system (HRMS) firm BetterPlace plans to get listed in the stock market and, in the next 12 to 18 months, it should make it to the bourses, believes Co-Founder Pravin Agarwala.

In an Interview with Moneycontrol, Agarwala elaborates how the company seeks to achieve a certain size before going public, and how it has geared up for a six-fold growth in the next two years in terms of revenue.

Agarwala also talks about the recent acquisitions of start-ups in jobs and upskilling space to ramp up both B2B and B2C businesses and whether BetterPlace is actively looking to buy out more firms and raise fresh funds.

Excerpts from the interaction:

You have acquired young firms like OLX People, Waah Jobs and Oust Labs in the past couple of months. How are you integrating them and how is it aiding your service delivery and portfolio expansion?

When we acquire a company, we look at how they will fit into our long-term vision. As a firm, the question is what we are trying to solve? Well, two things: We are taking over the people management of companies using technology. Second, we are trying to create more job opportunities. Our goal is digitisation of organisations, and help people and entrepreneurs to grow.

When we acquired Oust Labs, the driving force was to train millions of people who needs training to bag jobs. We will skill and upskill people for free, and find opportunities for them. Oust Labs will play a key role. Even corporates can use our modules and courses to scale up productivity of their staff. Waah and OLX People will help us scale up in the B2B space.

The aim is to have an integrated platform for both people and corporate clients. With all these firms, we can help corporates improve employee engagement, and create a positive impact on people.

You have raised funding recently, and have also acquired start-ups. Are you financially well leveraged or looking to raise more funds?

We have enough capital to meet our targets that we have set till the end of 2022. We will be hitting $100-million revenue by December 2022. That’s almost a doubling of revenue in a year’s time. We are also open to inorganic growth. If we see some good opportunities (to acquire firms), we may do that. At this stage, we are not actively looking at fresh funds.

You said your HRMS service will manage 30 million workers in little over next two years. It’s a 15X growth.  What does it mean in terms of revenue growth?

We want to touch three crore people every day. We are looking at rapid growth year-on-year so that we should be little over $300 million revenue (over Rs 2,250 crore) by that time – from, let’s say $50 million now, to $300 million by March 31, 2024.

There is a wave going on – either become a unicorn or get listed in the stock market. Where are you on that aspiration?

Our goal is to touch more and more people. Unicorn is a by-product of what you achieve. Every entrepreneur has a wish to get listed. They want to do an IPO. We also have a wish to go to the market. It’s a decision we have to take in the next 12 to 18 months, when we are ready.

It depends on a reasonable size as a company to go for IPO and you are absolutely a profitable company. When you are going public, you are taking money of citizens and ensure that you give them good returns in the long run.

Some of the staffing firms are listed. Does this give you the confidence to go public and become successful in the stock market?

Our governance and reporting structure is very good. If you look at HRMS players globally, they have done very well. We believe, we are the largest in the blue-collar space (in India). We have the added advantage of the staffing model as well. Our size and profitability built into it, the advantage of HRMS and staffing, and the gig opportunities put together, gives us the confidence to get a very exciting response.

As a staffing firm, how many people you are managing now?

We provide complete HRMS to companies and currently managing around 20 lakh people on a daily basis. In this segment, we manage onboarding, attendance, and payroll, among other such services. We intend to touch three crore people by the end of March 31, 2024. In the blue-collar organised and semi-organised job opportunity space, we are creating 15,000 person days of work per day.

Persondays work creation is a bit tricky. It indicates that you are looking at hour as a unit of work. These are gig workers and there’s not necessarily an employee-employer relationship.

What we are looking at is how people earn more every hour. What’s important is whether you are earning Rs 300 per hour or Rs 30 per hour. This is where opportunity value and upskilling, and gig opportunity issues come into picture. In terms of employee-employer relationship, sometimes it’s there and sometimes not.

So, what’s the break-up of gig work and regular work in the opportunities you are creating?

At our company level, we have around 60 percent in the regular work and 40 percent in gig or flexible work. By 2025, this could be 40 percent full time and 60 percent in gig work.

From the overall industry perspective in the organised and semi-organised blue collar space, this break-up could be in the range of 6 percent in gig and rest in employee-employer relationship. But we believe that this number is going to change dramatically.