Building Careers for the Retail Workforce: Truman

We had the opportunity to have a conversation with Abdus Salaam, the CEO and Founder of Truman, which is building India’s #1 on-demand platform for retail workforce. The retail segment has witnessed massive growth, across multiple industries, but what is the impact on the workforce? While the retail industry has taken giant strides in providing better value and services to the customer, have we taken the workforce along? Abdus speaks about these issues, and how he is building Truman as a purpose driven organization with a mission to provide not just employment, but also career development opportunities with fair pay to millions of people in the retail gig workforce. Here are the excerpts of Abdus Salaam in conversation with Rajiv Maheshwari, Co-Founder of From The Experts’ Mouth. You can watch the entire conversation on our YouTube channel and the video is embedded towards the end of this post.

The Background – Early Childhood

What was your childhood like and how did it influence your professional life?

I had started my schooling in Hindi medium from a Government school. Subsequently, a school was started by the Delhi Government under a new scheme, ‘Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya‘ (loosely translates into Talent Development School) and I was part of the first batch of students to join this school in 1997. One thing led to another and I went on to study at Kirori Mal College in North Campus of Delhi University and subsequently, I had the privilege of studying at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) in the General Management Program.

Professionally, I have worked in organizations that were responsible for hiring and deploying manpower in the retail sector to big brands such as Apple, Microsoft, HP, etc.

This decade of working in the retail industry provided me with a good understanding of modern trade and evolution of retail in India.

Related Read: Education for the Future

The Idea of a Platform for Retail Workforce

What prompted you to start this organization, Truman? Was the idea related to your early experiences?

There are too many dots that have connected to make this happen. Firstly, even though I have seen the evolution of retail from kirana stores to swanky malls, the same has not been seen in the retail workforce. This workforce contributes 8% to the employment pool, but has not evolved at the same pace.

As a student, I used to visit trade fairs and exhibitions that would happen at Pragati Maidan, the most prominent trade exhibition venue in Delhi. Even though there were several opportunities for temporary staffing at these trade fairs, I could not figure out a structured and organized way to access these opportunities. Although students were working at these events, I did not have the same contacts to avail of these opportunities, although I wanted that extra money in those days.

The situation has not changed much, and we still do not have a discovery platform for retail workforce that can provide such opportunities to the youth and also meet the retail manpower needs at the same time.

Related Read: How to draft a winning CV

The Youth: Face of the Retail Workforce

We often speak about the demographic dividend and the bright future of our country because of our youth. But, you have been quite vocal in your criticism about the kind of opportunities that the youth seems to be getting today. What are the key issues in this regard?

There is a dearth of opportunities in the retail industry that can truly build skills and careers in today’s market. There are a lot of opportunities to become delivery partners and deliver food, grocery or other retail products on bikes. Or, you can drive a cab with companies such as Ola and Uber.

However, these opportunities do not help the youth achieve their career goals, build skills and work towards building careers. They have a job, but they have no career and that is the naked truth. Hence, we believe in creating meaningful opportunities that help the youth earn money and also take a step up towards building their career, and as a principle, we do not take on delivery jobs.

Related Read: Top 10 Youth Voices

The Opportunity: Building Careers

How can retail provide this opportunity of building careers to the youth? What makes this retail opportunity special and unique?

Firstly, you get an opportunity to interact with the customers and this is the most sought after skill in any industry. They also gain vital exposure to other skills such as selling, which is critical in any industry. Working in the retail industry also helps sharpen their communication skills and work on non-verbal aspects such as body language, posture, etc. that are crucial.

There are opportunities to move up the value chain – by transitioning from working for a budget brand such as Big Bazaar to a higher end brand such as Marks & Spencer. The other opportunity is to move to different functions or industries – e.g. moving to a sales role from grocery to an automobile showroom.

Also, one can move up the hierarchy, which is not a realistic option in the delivery partner model, where millions are working directly with the platform and there is no growth option to become a supervisor.

Related Read: How to identify your hidden potential

The Brand: Truman – The Humane Company

What prompted you to choose the brand name, Truman? Is it true to the customer or to the workforce?

We are a value driven organization, as also reflected in our tagline, The Humane Company. There is a clear trust deficit in the industry and the youth wants to do good work and be paid fair remuneration on time.

From the perspective of the retailers, we help even small retailers with trained manpower, such as a professional salesman, and this helps them set-up and grow their business. They can just focus on their core business and not worry about manpower.

Related Read: Grandmother starts a retail business

The Impact for the Retail Workforce

So, how has this branding translated into experiences, on the supply side? What is the magnitude of the impact that one could create?

The potential impact is massive. We have 4000 malls in India, with over 200 stores and 5 sales people, making this a market of 50 lakh man days (5 million) each day. Since modern trade is less than 10% of the total retail market, this is a massive opportunity.

However, there are challenges and the trust deficit that need to be overcome, and we have been successfully addressing this. The worker gets a meagre portion of the fair value of the wages, and we have ensured that the workers get the lion’s share of the wages paid by the retailers. This has had a beneficial impact and the workforce itself has become our brand ambassadors and provide us market intelligence to take up more assignments and customer engagements.

I have visited small towns and met the workforce that has made their living based on opportunities provided on our platform. These real life stories provide me the fuel to keep running, making and building each day.

Related Read: A Poem about the plight of migrant workers

The Challenges

The pandemic would have been a massive challenge, since entire retail sector was effectively shut down. How did you stay afloat and what are your learnings from this phase?

We used this period to work on our technology and strengthen our infrastructure. We created workflow solutions for our operations team, launched our new website and launched our mobile application. This has been useful, since the perception has started changing since the last quarter of 2021 and the number of inquiries have shot up five folds. There is mainstream acceptance of the word ‘gig’ and retailers are looking at workforce delivery models that can provide them the right workforce only at the right time.

Solutions that address the seasonality challenges are now in huge demand, since 70% of the monthly sales in retail typically happen during the first three weekends, and the five weekdays and the last week are rather light. There are peaks and troughs within the day as well, that we can address – for example in a restaurant. The peaks during the festivals are another example, where we can help retailers meet the surge in demand.

In addition, there is a stark difference between the quality and talent of the retail workforce in India as compared to what we see in the developed markets. This will also catch up eventually, as more educated people start working in the retail industry, and existing workforce upgrade their skills.

Related Read: 7 Steps to dealing with Adversity

Skill Upgrade and Building Careers

So, are you helping the workforce in their journey of upgrading their skills?

Absolutely, we are working on our Learning Management System (LMS), where we are developing training modules. These modules are being designed from the perspective of the customer and are highly specific to the retail industry. These learning interventions will be provided free of cost to the workforce and will help the workforce build their skills and work towards creating a career.

This will enable us to provide pre-verified pre-screened and pre-trained manpower to our customers on demand through our platform. Instead of just getting warm bodies from staffing companies, the retailers will now have access to a trained workforce that may even have industry specific skills – e.g. shoes or automobiles.

The Journey

What do you enjoy most in this entrepreneurial journey?

We are steadfast in our commitment to uplift the youth and our vision is to uplift 10 million youth and make 10 million youth smile.

Entrepreneurship

If you look back at your journey, is there something that you would advise others to do differently?

I am too young to ‘advice’ people, but I can speak about my experiences. Firstly, I really wanted to do something that unleashes me and helps me make peace with my inner self. This inner peace is truly satisfying.

Secondly, when you are working for a values driven organization which has a purpose, everything goes in your favour, if you put this first. This is how it has worked out for me.

Looking back at my journey, I only wish I had started on my entrepreneurial journey a few years earlier.

Related Read: Staying motivated as an entrepreneur

Unleash With FTEM – Watch The Full Video

The above are excerpts from the conversation between Abdus Salaam and Rajiv Maheshwari in this episode of ‘Unleash With FTEM’

Check out the playlist of Season1 of UnleashWithFTEM.

Subscribe to the channel for more!

About Abdus Salaam

Abdus Salaam is the CEO and Founder of Truman, where he is building the first-ever “On-Demand Retail Exclusive Workforce Platform”, that enables retailers to align the workforce with the seasonality of sales. He has worked in the retail and staffing industries with leading retail brands, before starting Truman in 2018.

He graduated from University of Delhi and attended the General Management Program at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA).

The Truman app is available on Play Store for Android devices

Want to Get Featured? – Contact Us

This post is based on Abdus Salaam’s conversation with Rajiv Maheshwari. In case you are interested in taking advantage of our learning ecosystem by sharing your journey in the above format or through courses, you may contact us.

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