What I Built
KaamSetu is a multilingual labour marketplace for farmers and agricultural workers in Maharashtra.
Farmers can post work requirements, including activities, location, date, worker count and wage. Workers can create profiles with their skills, availability and expected wage. Both sides can explore listings, send requests, bid directly and agree on a price before booking.
The platform is designed for people who may prefer Marathi, Hindi, WhatsApp or phone calls over complex apps.
KaamSetu addresses two connected problems:
- Farmers struggle to find available workers when work is urgent.
- Workers lose income when they cannot find work during lean periods. The initial revenue model is a small service charge after a successful booking, with possible future revenue from relevant agricultural product partnerships.
Demo
Live demo: https://kaamsetu.phala.work/app/
Code
GitHub repository: https://github.com/Khyati-9/ideathon
How I Built It
KaamSetu is built with:
- A multilingual HTML, CSS and JavaScript frontend
- A Django backend with farmer, worker, job, matching and bidding APIs
- A WhatsApp bot for conversational onboarding
- REST APIs for live jobs, worker profiles, offers and booking flows
- Marathi, Hindi and English interfaces
- Responsive layouts for mobile users
- Transparent rule-based matching using work type, skills and location
- Direct wage negotiation between farmers and workers The system is designed so that users can access the marketplace through the website, WhatsApp or a phone-assisted workflow. The current matching system is intentionally transparent and rule-based. It compares work requirements, worker skills, location and availability. This makes the result understandable to users and easy to improve as real marketplace data is collected. Why Does Open Innovation Matter? Open innovation makes it possible to build tools for communities that are often overlooked by mainstream software. A transparent and adaptable system can support local languages, local work categories and informal employment patterns. Open technologies also make it easier for other developers, rural organisations and community groups to improve the platform for their own regions. KaamSetu is designed to evolve with real feedback from farmers and workers instead of forcing them into a fixed, urban-first marketplace model.
My First Users
The project has been tested through field conversations, telecalling and survey responses from:
The interviews helped shape the initial product decisions, including village-level sourcing, seasonal work discovery, wage visibility, WhatsApp access and direct farmer-worker communication.
The first pilot jobs are being used to measure whether workers can be found, matched and successfully booked in real conditions.
Current Validation
The project is currently validating:
- Whether farmers repeatedly need help finding workers
- Whether workers actively search for work during lean periods
- Whether direct bidding helps both sides agree on a fair wage
- Whether workers and farmers return after their first completed job
- Whether a service charge is acceptable after successful fulfilment The next milestone is to complete at least 10 real transactions and measure every request, match, acceptance, cancellation and completed payment. Note on AI The current production prototype uses transparent rule-based matching rather than a closed AI API. This keeps matching explainable for farmers and workers.
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