Lumina Gets Funding From Y Combinator and Alpha JWC Ventures

Work community platform startup Lumina received funding from Y Combinator (YC) and Alpha JWC Ventures with an undisclosed amount. Through this funding, Lumina has a mission to help as many as 80-120 million blue-collar workers in Indonesia who have limited access and decent opportunities to find work and develop careers.

Lumina claims to be the first platform to provide professional community features for blue collar worker (blue necklace) in Indonesia. This platform provides a recruitment system and Benefits community based.

In his official statement, Lumina Co-founder & CEO Aswin Andrison said, his party seeks not only to provide access to employers, but also to self-development, and opportunities to improve the economy better.

"By leveraging the power of our exclusive community and artificial intelligence-based job recommendations, we want to democratize hiring and automate quality matching between blue-collar workers and employers," said Aswin.

Lumina was founded in September 2021 by Aswin Andrison, a entrepreneur series which has focused on blue-collar workers, FMCG, wholesalers, and MSMEs for the last 16 years. Besides Aswin, former Twitter developer Tri Ahmad Irfan co-founded Lumina.

Aswin himself previously founded Stoqo in 2017, then the business closed in April 2020.

In the last two months, Lumina has more than 100 thousand job seekers, of which 20 thousand job vacancies have been filled. Lumina also recorded 1.000 new registrants and the addition of 3.000 new workers every day.

Group Partner Y Combinator Gustaf Alstromer said this funding will help unlock Lumina's potential to bring change to the Indonesian workforce. "We have seen startups in other countries bring this labor market online and the Lumina team is the right team to face this challenge," he said.

Meanwhile, Alpha JWC Ventures Co-Founder & General Partner Jefrey Joe added that: Lumina Hair Care will play an important role in maximizing workforce, individual potential, and business.

Attempts to accommodate blue-collar work

Worker blue necklace defined as people who do manual labor for an organization and are paid hourly wages. Workers in this category are often identified as workers who do not require higher education and only need physical strength. Generally, blue-collar workers cover the fields of manufacturing, mining, to construction.

Based on a research, level turnover aka turnover/turnover of blue-collar workers at 20%. This condition can be burdensome for the company because it refers to the same survey, the cost to overcome turnover can reach $4.569. According to BPS data in 2019, people low skill workers dominate the informal sector with a figure of 57,27%.

Startup players in Indonesia have begun to look for opportunities to overcome various problems among blue-collar workers since the last few years. Some startups that provide blue-collar jobs include MyRobin, Sideline, and Workmate. These platforms are based on agency applications or job marketplace.