When Ayan Wadhwa&rsquo;s domestic worker asked his mother for money to help pay a hospital bill, he was puzzled.&nbsp;
Wadhwa was 15 at the time, and wondered: Why did someone who worked every day still have to depend on her employer during a medical emergency?
&ldquo;So, I was young and I was confused over why our workers even need to ask for help with these sorts of things. I began questioning why the government doesn&rsquo;t provide it,&rdquo; recalls the 17-year-old, now a class 12 student at Oberoi International School.
That question eventually became Workers of India. Wadhwa&rsquo;s initiative helps informal workers understand and access government welfare schemes, particularly the e-Shram card.&nbsp;
<img title="Workers of India is an AI chatbot available in English, Hindi, and Marathi" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/sep/Working-for-workers-a_e.jpg" alt="Workers of India is an AI chatbot available in English, Hindi, and Marathi" width="1280" height="720" />
Launched in 2021, e-Shram was designed as a national database for unorganised workers and is intended to connect them with social security and welfare schemes. For Wadhwa, the first step was research. He discovered the e-Shram card and asked his domestic worker if she knew about it. She didn&rsquo;t.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s when I realised that so many workers, especially in Mumbai, had no clue about these benefits which are their rights,&rdquo; he says. He began with booklets, workshops and registration drives. According to Workers of India, the initiative has now impacted more than 1000 workers and helped register over 500. &nbsp;Wadhwa has conducted workshops for awareness and registration help, and conducted factory visits, each of which have reached hundreds more. But getting workers to a government portal is one thing; getting them through it is another.
&ldquo;The biggest thing they struggle with is interacting with technology and actually going through the whole process,&rdquo; he says. He describes a registration process involving OTPs, server errors and a website that, in his experience, is difficult to navigate even for people who are comfortable with technology.
&ldquo;At my workshop, literally, people had to write their phone number on their hand because they hadn&rsquo;t had it memorised,&rdquo; he says, explaining the lack of digital savvyness among informal workers. That experience led him to rethink the very idea of digital accessibility. If workers already use WhatsApp to communicate with employers and receive payments, why make them learn another platform?
<img title="Ayan Wadhwa finds that the biggest struugle is getting workers to interact with technology" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/sep/Working-for-workers-b_e.jpg" alt="Ayan Wadhwa finds that the biggest struugle is getting workers to interact with technology" width="1280" height="720" />Ayan Wadhwa finds that the biggest struugle is getting workers to interact with technology
Enter the Workers of India AI WhatsApp chatbot. Available in English, Hindi and Marathi, it allows workers to ask questions by typing or sending a voice note and receive simplified guidance on e-Shram, welfare schemes and employment contracts. &ldquo;I realised I could try to integrate my ideas through something they are already familiar with, which is WhatsApp,&rdquo; says Wadhwa.
The voice note function may be the most telling feature. A worker does not need to navigate an app, type a long query or decode bureaucratic language. They can simply speak. &ldquo;I think that feature made it really seamless for them. It was easy to integrate, and easier for them to simply send in their questions,&rdquo; he says.
The chatbot is also an example of Wadhwa learning by doing. A computer science student, he built the system using n8n, OpenAI and ElevenLabs, with guidance from his parents and AI tools. &nbsp;His next plans include adding more Indian languages and turning Naukri Nama, his micro-contract initiative, into properly formatted PDFs.
Through Naukri Nama, workers can generate work contracts to safeguard themselves and have a written piece of contract. However, the contracts have proved harder to sell. While workers have created some, Wadhwa says employers can be resistant to formalising arrangements that have traditionally been verbal. For Wadhwa, however, the larger ambition goes beyond a helpful chatbot or Naukri Nama. It is about changing the language, and perhaps, the hierarchy around informal work.
&ldquo;I want to redefine the term; instead of calling them informal workers, just call them workers,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why they have to be called informal. The work that they are doing is real and it can also be formal.&rdquo;
That formalisation, he believes, begins at home: with how employers speak to, pay, and treat the people who cook, clean, drive, and care for their households. &ldquo;I think that starts not only with policy, but as someone whom you respect as a worker and someone who is doing their job,&rdquo; he says.
Workers of India is now looking beyond Mumbai, with Wadhwa recruiting volunteers and exploring ways to take the initiative to other parts of the country. He has already begun factory visits in Gujarat, and is working on integrating more languages in the AI chatbot.
[popcorn number="700" desc="Number of workers Ayan Wadhwa has helped with this initiative" class="Default"]

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