Pilots — Ghaziabad & Dharwad

Both pilots ran on the Blue Dot (jobs) network, the first network to go live. The pilots in Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) and Dharwad (Karnataka) tested one question: could employers and job seekers already in the district find each other and act?

The jobs and job seekers the pilots found were already in the district.

10,000+

Local job openings per district, from < 10% of MSMEs

20,000+

Job seekers listed across two districts in just 2 weeks

2–3 min

To create a dot by voice call on any phone

~50%

Placement conversion in targeted drives, vs ~5% at conventional drives

< ₹10

Per interaction (voice AI) vs ₹500+ for traditional field survey

Jobs found that were not listed online

When roughly 10% of MSMEs in each district were listed, over 10,000 local job openings were found per district — many of which had been circulating through word-of-mouth and fragmented postings for months. During the same period, leading national platforms showed fewer than 100 active listings for the same districts.

The jobs already existed, but almost none of them were listed online.

Job seekers listed in two weeks

In each of Dharwad and Ghaziabad, over 15,000 job seekers were found and listed as dots in just two weeks — 20,000+ across the two districts.

Listing by voice call cut the time to capture what each person needs to 2–3 minutes, replacing physical camps, job fairs and intermediary networks that previously took weeks of mobilisation.

Outcomes

• Placement conversion rose from around 5% at conventional placement drives and job fairs to around 50% in targeted, digitally enabled drives, where both candidates and jobs are listed before the event.
• Time to discover a relevant candidate fell from more than 2 weeks to under 2 days.
• Jobs that once required long commutes — often to another city — were now within 2 bus stops.

The lifecycle in practice

Both districts ran the same seven-step lifecycle — one cohort of job seekers, one of job providers, reaching them by different routes.

Dharwad — electrician graduates from ITI Dharwad

ITI Dharwad trains electricians every year, but its graduates had no way of being found by employers beyond word of mouth. The institute became the aggregator for the batch.

Step	What happened
1. Decide who to bring in	The district identified ITI Dharwad as the aggregator with direct reach to a graduating batch of electricians, who had real skills but were not listed online
2. Choose the route in	Assisted — the institute already held student records
3. Data collection	Bulk upload of the whole batch at once, rather than student by student
4. Completing the profile	Each graduate reached by AI Voice Agent — a short call, at a fraction of the cost of a manual survey, confirming role preferences, location and trade skills. The webapp stayed available for students who preferred it
5. Verification checks	Each profile checked automatically to confirm it was in the right format, complete and consented to
6. Verified	ITI Dharwad reviewed and confirmed the batch on the Aggregator DPG
7. Live	Each electrician listed as a live job seeker dot — local manufacturers could find exactly this skill set for the first time, instead of relying on informal referrals

Ghaziabad — an MSME association turning job openings into dots

Ghaziabad’s manufacturing MSMEs had jobs to fill, often circulating only by word of mouth for months. A local MSME association took on the aggregator role for its member businesses.

Step	What happened
1. Decide who to bring in	The Ghaziabad administration, with UPSDM and the DIC, identified the MSME association as best placed to reach its manufacturing members
2. Choose the route in	Assisted — an onboarding drive at a member gathering, since many owners would not have registered on their own
3. Data collection	An inbound campaign — members scanned a shared QR code and registered their open roles on the spot
4. Completing the profile	Each business completed its listing — role, requirements, location — through the AI Voice Agent or the webapp
5. Verification checks	Each listing checked automatically to confirm it was in the right format, complete and consented to
6. Verified	The association reviewed and confirmed new listings on the Aggregator DPG
7. Live	Each opening a live dot on the Blue Dot network

Across the district, this conversion took the pilot from under 100 jobs visible on national platforms to over 10,000 local openings found from under 10% of MSMEs — with discovery time falling from over two weeks to under two days.

Before / After

	Before	With Blue Dots
Job openings visible locally	< 100 on national platforms	10,000+ per district, from < 10% of MSMEs
Cost of collecting information about local jobs and workers	₹500+ per interaction (traditional field survey)	< ₹10 per interaction (voice AI)
Time to get listed online	Multiple touchpoints, physical presence required	2–3-minute voice conversation on any phone
Speed of finding job seekers	Weeks of physical mobilisation, camps and job fairs	20,000+ found across two districts in 2 weeks
Time to discover a relevant candidate	> 2 weeks	< 2 days
Placement conversion	~5% at conventional drives and job fairs	~50% in targeted placement drives
Distance to employment	Long commutes, often to another city	Within 2 bus stops

Named proof

Shri Abhinav Gopal, IAS, Chief Development Officer, Ghaziabad, outlined how job and candidate aggregators come together to list jobs and job seekers as dots across the district through a Jobs Facilitation Centre (JFC).

In Dharwad, manufacturers were convened by a local MSME association to turn their job openings into dots, and electrician graduates from ITI Dharwad could be found online.

Ecosystem uptake

A range of organisations are already using Blue Dots — placement and skilling organisations sharpening their targeting, assessment providers, and local operators scaling deployment. Named participants from the pilots include:

• Head Held High
• Recex
• JobsUFL
• TRRAIN
• Proof Of Skill
• Digital Labour Chowk

Momentum

Both districts are expanding the approach internally. Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka are scaling it to multiple districts across each state in the coming year.

Go deeper

See The Economics of Local Discovery for the underlying market logic, and Activating Blue Dots in a District for the playbook these pilots followed.

Note

Figures on this page are drawn from the initiative’s published pilot results (white paper, pp. 2, 12–13) and from Answers to questions on Blue Dots initiative, which supersedes the earlier placement-conversion figures. Update them as new pilot data is reported.