Nia.one Is Transforming Migrant Work

Sachin Chhabra spent 14 years at Unilever before founding Peel-Works in 2010, a digital-first distribution platform connecting FMCG brands with kirana stores. After raising close to Rs 150 Cr and scaling the venture over a decade, he exited in March 2020 as COVID lockdowns disrupted operations.

What he saw in the years that followed convinced him that India's economic ambitions and the fate of its blue-collar workforce were heading toward a collision.

India's blue-collar workforce stands at 450 Mn people. Nearly 70% of the 90 Mn jobs expected to be created by 2030 will be labour-intensive. The COVID pandemic had already sent migrant workers scrambling home in 2020. The more recent LPG crisis in West Asia triggered another wave of reverse migration, choking supply chains and leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without stable income or housing.

"Migrant workers typically move to cities with the goal of sending Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 back home each month. Our goal is to ensure that every worker on our platform can consistently send at least Rs 8,000 home every month," says Chhabra, who co-founded Nia.one in 2024 alongside Lt Col Pushkar Raj, who brings nearly two decades of military service experience to the company.

The founders were clear from the outset that this would be a profit-focused business, not a charitable one. The cause is social. The model is commercial.

Nia maps migration corridors where industries dependent on blue-collar labour are concentrated and sets up what it calls studios: affordable, managed accommodation built around the real needs of migrant workers.

The company currently operates close to 100 studios across four manufacturing and supply chain hubs in Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru, and Chennai. Each studio has four to six rooms with bunks and regular beds, RO water, laundry facilities with washing machines, a small dining area, and an increasingly well-stocked grocery offering sourced directly from wholesale markets.

The onboarding philosophy is built around one insight: migrant workers do not trust urban settings, and for good reason. Standard PGs take deposits and make workers fight to get them back. Nia charges no deposit. Workers pay one month of advance rent and move in. Everything else, food, groceries, insurance, upskilling, is optional.

Meals cost Rs 49 each, prepared through partnerships with cloud kitchens. Groceries and essentials are sourced from wholesale markets and passed on at below-market prices. Maggi sells at Rs 9 instead of Rs 10. Shoes worth Rs 900 go for Rs 300 from export surplus stock. Feminine care products are available at 25% off from J&J and P&G.

The math, as Chhabra puts it, is straightforward. A worker earning Rs 15,000 pays roughly Rs 1,500 in rent, Rs 1,500 for meals, and Rs 2,000 for other expenses. That leaves Rs 10,000 to send home, which is exactly the target.

Nia mandates KYC for every resident. Workers provide Aadhaar details and confirm employment with a staffing company. If they are not connected with one, Nia offers to place them. Workers who are unemployed and unwilling to register with a staffing agency are not admitted.

"A person who is not working and does not want to pick up a job in a reliable way is not welcome. We do not want that character inside our premises," Chhabra says directly.

A significant portion of Nia's operational staff are army veterans, bringing discipline and accountability to day-to-day operations. Female studios, of which there are roughly 500 across Hosur and Sriperumbudur, have mandatory female wardens, CCTV coverage, and SOS helplines. Theft prevention is treated with the same seriousness as physical safety.

The company also guarantees zero job-loss days. If a company ends a contract with a worker, Nia commits to placing them elsewhere within 24 hours.

Nia's revenue model is a layered marketplace operating on both sides of the equation.

On the worker side, it earns margins on rent, food, groceries, and financial products like health and life insurance. It also has tie-ups with local hospitals for accident and trauma care. On the enterprise side, it charges a 5% commission on staffing placements and collects rent from cloud kitchen operators who use Nia's premises to serve both residents and nearby delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato.

The company recorded an ARR of Rs 30 Cr for the fiscal year ended March 2026. It raised $2.5 Mn in seed funding from Elevar Equity and is now targeting a Series A round later this year.

Customer acquisition follows the same logic as the workers themselves: offline, hyper-local, and built on trust. Pamphlets at tea vendors and cigarette stalls, merchandisers at bus stops. Digital channels do not work well in this segment because the target audience does not yet trust what they see on a screen.

"WhatsApp and all such things do not work so much because they do not have trust in what they see digitally. The catchment area is well defined. So it is a traditional way of acquiring them," Chhabra explains.

Nia is building Rafiki, an AI agent designed to act as a personal financial advisor for migrant workers. It will recommend better-paying jobs, flag spending optimisation opportunities, and push recommendations through WhatsApp or SMS. The product will be launched post Series A.

The scale ambition is significant. From 10,000 members today across roughly 100 centres, the company plans to reach 500,000 members across approximately 3,000 centres, a 50-fold jump.