Kochi Restaurateur Turns ₹1.79 Lakh Theft Into A Startup Idea – Launches Verified Hiring Platform, Earns NRAI Recognition

Ask any restaurant or cafe owner, and one of the first challenges they will rant about is hiring and retaining staff.

In India, attrition in the restaurant industry has been a cause for concern due to factors such as the sector being largely unorganized, employees struggling with long working hours, and a generally unsystematic overall structure.

“I have been in the Food and Beverage space for 15 years now. I have seen firsthand the issues both parties grapple with: micro business owners and workers. While the former does not have a simplified platform for hiring and managing employees, the latter believes there is a lack of stable job options. The result is chaos. I wanted to change it,” Antony Sebastian, founder of Kaamhai, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

Founded in 2024, Kaamhai is a Bengaluru-based workforce hiring and management platform offering small-scale and micro business owners a verified database of candidates to recruit from. It makes hiring simple, systematic, and hassle-free.

The result? Lower attrition rates, higher productivity, and better management.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Hailing from Kochi in Kerala, Antony Sebastian pursued his education in electronics and computer engineering. 

 After working in IT Infrastructure Management at GE Capital, he decided to dive into the waters of entrepreneurship and open restaurants and cafes. After gathering fifteen years of experience in running his own restaurants, he also became a consultant in the HoReCa (Hotels, Restaurants, Cafes) space.

“Very soon, I realized that this sector is extremely unorganized, especially from a hiring standpoint. The people we look for, like cooks, baristas, waiters, service staff, cashiers, and floor managers, can’t be found on portals like LinkedIn. They’re relatively low on academic qualifications but high on experience and zeal. So there are scattered WhatsApp and Facebook groups where business owners drop requirements and candidates reach out to them,” startup founder Antony Sebastian explains.

The absence of a systematic platform for hiring brings up a host of problems.

As per Antony, WhatsApp and Facebook groups do serve the purpose, but they do it slowly and inefficiently. For instance, restaurant owners often receive applications from candidates who have a clear skill mismatch in terms of the job in question.

Then, there is the issue of fake IDs, poaching, and switching jobs, because there is no structure in place.

“Poaching employees from other cafes is common. This is done by offering a raise of just Rs 500. No one can do anything about it because there is no proper system or process for hiring and relieving. The flip side of poaching means businesses keep hiring and firing employees. All of these add up and become hefty costs and sometimes even lead to a halt in business operations,” Antony Sebastian shares.

One day, Antony caught one of his staff stealing a total of Rs 1.79 lakh from his restaurant, with clear CCTV footages as proof. When he filed a complaint and tried to recover the money, his family was threatened.

“That was the final nail in the coffin for me. I decided to do something about simplifying and legitimising workforce hiring and management in this industry,” entrepreneur Antony shares.

With this, the idea of Kaamhai was born.

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JOURNEY AND CHALLENGES

Antony decided to build a platform that could make the lives of restaurant owners easier and provide job stability to the employees.

His wife, Deepa, connected him to her colleague’s husband, Bibin Moncy, who immediately displayed interest in the idea and joined hands to simplify hiring in the restaurant industry. Deepa also joined the team as a co-founder.

Bibin Moncy has worked in the growth marketing space for brands like Swiggy, PrepLadder, and Manipal Global Education Services. He is now the co-founder of Kaamhai.

The initial journey of building Kaamhai from the ground up was phased and properly planned.

1. Entrepreneurs Antony Sebastian and Bibin Moncy decided to first hunt for real problem statements from both sides of the industry. Leveraging Antony’s extensive network, they conducted surveys by meeting restaurant owners, cafe owners, managers, waiters, cashiers, and almost everyone involved in the ecosystem.

Antony and Bibin noted that India’s unorganised sector contributes 50% of the GDP and employs nearly 80% of the workforce, yet there is no structured process or system for hiring and managing the workforce.

“We knew the woes of the business owners. But now we have also realised that a lot of candidates were looking for a platform where they could simply register and apply for jobs. They felt networking in this industry often took time, and WhatsApp groups were unreliable,” startup founder Antony Sebastian tells Startup Pedia.

2. Once the hiring platform and app were ready from an MVP standpoint, the duo brought together a small team of Business Development Managers and sent them to restaurants to gauge the issues in hiring processes, talk to cafe owners, give them trials of the app, and gather their feedback.

“This feedback was crucial to us and became the foundation of many important features of Kaamhai,” Antony says.

3. The next step was to work on building the B2C space and inviting candidates and job seekers to sign up on the app. This was done through a mix of influencer marketing campaigns.

All of these efforts manifested in Kaamhai receiving 5,000+ downloads in its initial test state itself.

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KAAMHAI: SIMPLIFYING WORKFORCE HIRING AND MANAGEMENT

Today, Kaamhai is an end-to-end AI-enabled workforce hiring platform that includes basic elements of workforce management integrated into it.

1. For restaurant owners and micro business owners, Kaamhai offers a concrete alternative to relying on shaky channels, unverified agents, and scattered WhatsApp and Facebook groups for hiring purposes. The platform offers direct access to a verified database of skilled manpower.

“We have features like employee references, verification of their credentials, and identification records. For instance, if X says they have worked at Y, then Y’s manager can confirm it. This adds transparency to the entire process. Plus, all our candidates are Aadhaar-verified,” entrepreneur Antony Sebastian says.

2. Business owners can post unlimited job openings—completely free of cost. They only have to make a small payment of Rs 499 to view the applicants and connect with them directly.

3. For workers, Kaamhai offers a simplified, trusted solution to register themselves, validate their identity, showcase their skills and work history, and directly connect with potential employers. They get access to legitimate job opportunities, thereby bringing them stable employment and job security.

4. Apart from serving as a verified hiring platform, Kaamhai has workforce management features like tracking leaves, payments, payslips, and advances, and maintaining employee identification records.

Although in its initial stage, Kaamhai has received positive feedback from the restaurant and cafe industry, with thousands of people switching from scattered WhatsApp and Facebook groups and unreliable agents to the simplified hiring platform that makes the job 10x easier for restaurant owners.

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KAAMHAI AT NRAI: SET TO EXPAND

Recently, Kaamhai made an appearance at the prestigious NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India) event. The founders showcased the hiring platform’s features and its ability to nip most hiring issues in the bud.

Attended by top restaurant and hospitality entrepreneurs, Kaamhai witnessed tangible industry interest.

“This event has proven to be powerful for us and our brand. We received a lot of positive feedback, and this affirmed that we are working towards a real gap that needs to be addressed,” Antony Sebastian says.

LOOKING AHEAD

Kaamhai has already garnered more than 7,000 users on its platform. It has also raised two funding rounds of USD 75,000.

Currently focusing on the hospitality sector, the platform aims to penetrate more industries in the future.

“Kaamhai has removed guesswork from the hiring game. We want hiring to be streamlined, simple, and hassle-free. For workers, we want to be able to offer them job security and stability—something that is often missing from their lives. Kaamhai will solidify the unorganized sector of India and bring real structure to it,” Antony Sebastian signs off.

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