GharKamai for The Desperate Housewives! (Updated)

October 20, 2009

By arvind

In our society, it is so acceptable and understandable to see a highly educated woman settling down as a home-maker raising kids, watching TV soaps, cooking great food etc. Scarcely does one (read men) understand what it feels like when a girl who was taught to become a professional since childhood is forced to become a housewife. Sshhh, and does anyone even know the loss that the country incurs by depriving such a large population of skilled manpower from work.

Well, here is an all-woman start-up GharKamai.com looking forward to change all that. Gharkamai leverages the power of the internet to reach the disconnected womanpower sitting in their homes. Co-founded by Maneesha Sarin & Kachina Chawla who bootstrapped the startup, GharKamai already connects with over a 1000 woman professionals and about 500 hundred businesses.

The great thing about their project is that every applicant (manpower) is screened and her references are checked before being allowed to access the business projects or clientele. This ensures quality of the manpower, albeit at a cost of low sign up rate.

While the process of making money by GharKamai is not clear on the website, but such businesses have great potential to charge a commission on every client-to-worker hit. Just like any other jobs portal. The offering is comparable to ODesk, RentaCoder or Elance except that this one is meant particularly for women.

Well here is some feedback for the GharKamai guys (nee gals). Publicity through an all-woman channel such as Meow Radio FM, partnerships with women colleges/institutes and some amount of screening of Business Houses also will do you good. You can also adopt a ratings/performance based model to help each side learn more about the other. Last but not the least, have a small video-tour on the website to explain a new-comer as to how your portal works.

So pluggd.in readers (particularly gals) do give the GharKamai a spin. And guys out there!! Do not forget to inform your wives/girlfriends about it too

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apu on October 20, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Interesting venture! However, I found this sentence jarring – “So pluggd.in readers do give the GharKamai a spin. Do not forget to inform your wives/girlfriends about this too” – the assumption is that the default pluggd.in reader is male…

arvind on October 20, 2009 at 6:14 pm

That depends on the assumption that only men have girlfriends…;)

cheers,
Arvind

- Shashi on October 20, 2009 at 6:42 pm
  
  lol.. good one Arvind
  
Ashish on October 20, 2009 at 6:43 pm

My guesstimate is that 95% readers are men..out of which almost 60% wd belong to FOSLA

apu on October 20, 2009 at 8:31 pm

Arvind, sure – but even so, what about female readers? I’m also surprised to see Ashish’s comments that 95% of the readers are likely to be men. In any case, while it may not be a ‘big deal’, the unconscious assumption of male readership is a little irksome at least to this female reader.

apu on October 20, 2009 at 8:36 pm

And out of curiosity, checked the vizisense data for you guys – your female readership is 19% – not that low, isn’t it? now, thats an average and could well be higher for a post like this…so, not an insignificant audience, isn’t it

arvind on October 20, 2009 at 8:41 pm

I edited the text.
Cheers, Arvind

Ashish on October 20, 2009 at 9:06 pm

Vizisense data is anything but reliable.
As per them, our traffic isn’t going anywhere..while real numbers are completely diff. Vizisense isn’t a stat tool – its a media planning tool.

SO take their data with few trucks of salt.

apu on October 20, 2009 at 9:08 pm

Ashish – actually, considering something else that I am working on, that’s a useful tip. Thanks!

Ritesh on October 21, 2009 at 7:37 am

I agree with the above sentiments – the sentence was almost as sexist as the phrase “Doctors and their wives” which was once widely used but will now be universally considered insulting. Notwithstanding the 95% male readership, the issue is with the *assumption* that women cannot be engineers/entrepreneurs etc.

I am sure this was unintentional, and the change made is welcome.

naman on October 21, 2009 at 9:01 pm

A small example of controversial marketing. Nothing discussed about the product but still this review will get a lot views coz of these comments. This is #11.
Tomorrow headlines at fakingnews or India TV “Sexist blogger bends down to readers comments and changes his views.”

…LOL

Ashish on October 22, 2009 at 12:01 am

Interesting !
Maybe ‘Arving of Lattice Purple’, owing to the comments had to change his company to ‘Lattice Pink’ !