Introducing Ayush Khanna and Kohl Gill- LaborVoices
On this next edition of Social Good of Silicon Valley, we are proud to introduce Ayush Khanna and Kohl Gill, two founders behind LaborVoices. LaborVoices is a platform for companies to better understand labor conditions in third party factories. We spoke to Ayush and Kohl about their journey and lessons learned.
What is the 60 second summary of your social good initiative.
LaborVoices is a for-profit company that is a GlassDoor for factory workers around the world to help them improve their working conditions and find the best jobs available. Multinational brands use this data to detect and defeat issues in their supply chain. We have baked-in social impact as part of our business because workers are our data source. We are transparent about which factories have good working conditions, and for workers, it’s a good way to understand where the best jobs are. We also help workers understand their rights and benefits. We own the data that we crowdsource from factory workers. Currently, we are most prevalent in Bangladesh and Turkey.
But wouldn’t workers be afraid of giving feedback?
We present ourselves as a third party to workers, so the fact that we are not affiliated with the factory or the brand sourcing from the factory guarantees them anonymity.. Additionally, we use the data in aggregate so there is no way to track specific pieces of feedback back to individual workers. Additionally, there is strength in numbers- we currently have over 40K+ workers contributing information to us about working conditions in their factories. Lastly, we’ve seen that existing worker hotlines have really poor user experience, and we think that the LaborVoices platform is a huge improvement over that.
How do you get into these factories?
We don’t really need to! We have a team on the ground in Bangladesh and Turkey that helps us scale to multiple factories by doing worker outreach directly. Specifically, we try to chat to workers within the communities they live, so we don’t need to go through the factories themselves.
What is the relationship with the factories like?
Currently, our main form of interaction with factories is that we provide an option for factories to respond to the data and about 40% of factories respond to the data. Factories respond widely, everything from “we’re fixing this” to “this is not true.” This provides the factories an ability to respond to things workers might be saying and put their own voice forward. Additionally, we have some forward-thinking suppliers that use us as a competitive advantage and a business development tool.
So what impact has LaborVoices had on the data market?
Currently, LaborVoices has operated on a microscope in mostly Bangladesh and Turkey, although we’ve done small pilots in other markets. We’re in the process of wrapping up a Randomized Controlled Trial, where we expand into factories in a heavily prescribed way to study whether the data that LaborVoices has can predict trends within the broader labor market, like riots within factories, etc. However, I want to emphasize that we are still a startup and quite small- we only currently cover 6% of apparel sector in Bangladesh and Turkey. We are also trying to see what are the differences in business outcomes for factories that do look at our data.
Tell us how you were inspired to start your social good initiative.
Kohl: I studied semiconductor physics in college and become a scientist. I left academia and went to India for 1 year and did anti-corruption work in Delhi. Then, I worked in DC for the State Department and Department of Energy. Eventually, I got myself into the human rights bureau, where I focused on supply chain and corporate social responsibility. I then realized that no one was tapping into workers’ intelligence, even though most if not all of them were connected via mobile phones. So, I started experimenting with this idea, and once my experiments proved successful, I recruited Ayush as the technical cofounder.
Ayush: I worked at PayPal on the mobile apps team. In mid 2013, I heard about the Rana Plaza factory accident, where over 1,000 people died in Bangladesh. I realized that this factory was supplying to Walmart and other big brands. That’s when I decided I needed to just do something about this and when I came across Kohl, I just couldn’t say no.
What is your proudest moment in the past year?
Ayush: We were the first company (or entity of any kind for that matter) to provide peer-reviewed data on supplier working conditions, and we’ve been the only ones to do that for quite some time. For me, the goal of LaborVoices is to ultimately drive better working conditions for everyone. This has definitely been the proudest moment of my career so far.
Kohl: I agree with Ayush, and I would add that my proudest moment is doing things other people told us was impossible. People told us that we were not going to be able to scale, get data, get brands to buy data, or raise funding. We managed to accomplish half of them in the past year.
It’s ridiculous that in this field, so many people set their sights so low and reduce their expectations and we are proud to help people raise their expectations across the board.
However, this is not to say that the work we are doing is lauded across the group; in fact, it is quite polarizing, and some people are not as happy about our transparency. However, we are pushing against that to drive the industry forward.
What’s a common misconception you’ve realized about doing tech for social good?
People are scared to give information that is sensitive, and we have proved this wrong with the current success that LaborVoices has had In fact, what I’ve seen is that everyone wants to talk, and wants a better situation for themselves and other people. This has been a consistent fact across the tens of thousands of workers we have reached in multiple industries, 10+ languages and 11 countries since we began.
What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever made?
Early on, we made a decision about how we treat the data we get from workers. We decided that every bit of data workers provide is owned by us. This was strategically valuable as it placed us in a good situation than others who’ve tried in the space before us with mobile surveys. If you don’t own data, it’s hard for them to do things like release public reports, etc. This has not been easy, as many folks (especially potential customers) are used to owning any data they get, and we’ve lost quite a few customers as a result of this. However, we’ve stood by our principles for the greater mission, and we want to help the cause move forward by collecting and releasing as much data as possible.
What wakes you up every morning?
Kohl: I wake up every morning because our mission is important and I love the people I work with on a day to day basis. The people make the executing part of the job fun, and it’s a great privilege to be able to work with and build a fantastic team.
Ayush: I really agree with Kohl- for me, people is really important- I feel like often the people are considered as a “hygeine” factor, we take it for granted that we’ll work with such great people, and when they disappear, we don’t understand why things aren’t going well.
Additionally, I also get a lot of energy from people saying no to us- customers, partners, investors. I feel that I’m somewhere between being foolhardy and courageous, and everyday I get jazzed by working on LaborVoices and proving people wrong.
What keeps you up at night?
We are extremely eager, to the point of being restless, about getting our worker-reported data in the hands of brands, suppliers, and other entities to drive change. Mostly, we are just thinking about how we can create more urgency around our mission.
Best advice you’ve ever been given?
Ayush: “There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” Jocko Wilink and Leif Babin’s book Extreme Ownership (highly recommended, easily the best leadership book I’ve ever read) changed my world view on what it means to be a true leader.
A leader can only be effective if they maintain humility and responsibility towards their role. Often, it’s tempting to blame the market/competition/teammates/customers, but one can never lead successfully without owning their failures.
Last book read
Ayush: Currently, I am reading The Disaster Artist, a first-hand account about the production of The Room, a famously so-bad-it’s-good movie. It makes for a hilarious insight into the mind of the movie’s mysterious and eccentric creator.
Kohl: Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, audiobook read by LeVar Burton.
What are you currently listening to? (+1 to sharing a Spotify playlist)
Ayush: I’ve got Queens of The Stone Age’s brand new album Villains (Spotify link) on repeat. Other than that, I keep revisiting Spotify’s list of my top songs from 2016 (Spotify link).
How can people get involved with what you’re working on?
Social media’s a great place to start: @LaborVoices on Facebook/Twitter. We’re a tiny team going after a massive global problem, and if you see a way to help us fix it, drop us a line!
