Seed round accelerates the development of a national network of Niadel hubs, combining jobs, housing, and daily essentials into a single infrastructure layer for India’s blue- and grey-collar workforce.
Bengaluru / Gurugram — November 13, 2025: Nia.one, a full-stack platform for India’s gig and blue-collar workforce founded in August 2024, today announced that Elevar Equity has invested USD 2.4 million in its seed round. The investment will accelerate Nia.one’s vision of building Niadel hubs across major employment corridors, enabling workers to live closer to their workplaces, access fair jobs, and meet their daily needs within a single trusted phygital ecosystem.
As India’s gig and migrant workforce surpasses 23.5 million and urban clusters continue to expand, the need for inclusive worker infrastructure has never been more urgent.
Elevar is known for backing seasoned entrepreneurs building large-scale, enduring businesses focused on entrepreneurial households—resilient, aspirational households that remain deeply underserved. Nia.one aligns directly with this thesis by treating India’s gig workers not as a fragmented labor pool, but as households in motion that require integrated infrastructure: safe accommodations, reliable meals, essential products, and better-paying jobs—all within walking distance of work sites.
“At Nia.one, we are building the missing physical layer between the road and the rented bed,” said Lt. Col. Pushkar Raj (Retd), co-founder and COO, Nia.one. “Every Niadel hub is designed so that a worker can walk to work, return to a safe, affordable bed, access hot meals, and upgrade their life without debt traps or brokers. Elevar’s partnership strengthens our ability to build this infrastructure with discipline, speed, and long-term intent.”
“Most platforms see gig workers as transactions; Nia.one sees them as entrepreneurial workers needing infrastructure,” said Jyotsna Krishnan, Managing Partner, Elevar Equity, and co-founder and CEO, EPIC World. “By placing workers at the center—solving for where they live, what they eat, and how they work—Nia.one has built a model where worker well-being directly drives business performance. It’s a bold and fresh approach to this segment, and we are excited about the potential it holds.”
The seed capital will be used to:
· Scale Niadel hubs across key corridors in NCR, Bengaluru, and Pune—in locations within one kilometer of large work sites across logistics, warehousing, e-commerce, industrial, and services clusters.
· Deepen Rafiki, proprietary technology stack, by utilizing data and AI to match workers with better jobs, enhance retention for enterprises, and expand access to housing, food, mobility, and financial products transparently.
· Standardise a replicable operating playbook for hub expansion, with a sharp focus on unit economics, cross-subsidized services, and retention-driving worker experiences that convert migration from a survival response into a path to stability.
· Attract top talent and strengthen the team to drive innovation, operational excellence, and scalable growth across Nia.one’s expanding ecosystem.
The capital will enable Nia.one to expand from over 3,000 gig workers today to more than 8,000 in the coming quarters.
Nia.one’s Niadel model integrates four layers into every hub:
· Flow: Verified jobs with faster onboarding, predictable earnings, and lower first-30-day drop-offs.
· Studio: Essential products and services such as housing, meals, mobility, connectivity, and work gear at transparent prices that enable monthly savings.
· Tribe: Community, learning, and health services that convert transient stays into stable lives.
· Rafiki: An AI-led guide that uses data from the network to support worker decisions and enterprise performance.
This integrated architecture is designed to increase worker retention, reduce churn costs for employers, and create a capital-efficient model for building and operating physical hubs at scale. Founded in August 2024 by Sachin Chhabra and Lt. Col. Pushkar Raj (Retd.), Nia.one currently operates across 50+ cities, serving over 3,000 gig workers, with retention rates exceeding 80%—more than double the industry average of 40%. This fits Elevar’s proven method of supporting businesses that successfully provide essential services to low- to middle-income customers that they term Entrepreneurial Households.
“Infrastructure for migrant workers has been treated as an afterthought for too long,” added Sachin Chhabra, Founder and CEO. “We’ve proven the model works with 80%+ retention and unit economics that improve with scale. Our focus now is to prove, city by city, that a network of Niadels can deliver better lives for workers and stronger economics for enterprises. With Elevar on board, we are set up to build what lasts, not just what trends, a trusted home for India’s migrating workforce.”
About Nia.one
Nia.one, owned and operated by Umoja Marketplace Technologies Private Limited, is India’s first full-stack migration infrastructure platform for gig and blue-collar workers. It combines jobs (Flow), essential services and housing (Studio), community and outcomes (Tribe), and an AI-led guide (Rafiki) into Niadel hubs located within walking distance of major work sites. Nia.one’s mission is to convert migration into stability by improving worker retention, increasing savings, and delivering reliable manpower to enterprises across logistics, e-commerce, manufacturing, and services. Learn more at Nia.one.
About Elevar Equity
Elevar Equity pioneered the commercial approach to impact investing, backing seasoned entrepreneurs building large-scale, enduring businesses focused on Entrepreneurial Households and the EPIC Opportunity. Elevar was early in identifying the entrepreneurial trends within these households and has consistently invested in this thesis since 2006, starting with microfinance and quickly expanding to affordable housing, healthcare, education, agriculture, and small businesses (MSMEs). With two decades of ground-up field insights and the scale journeys of 50+ companies, the Elevar Method of investing has delivered high-priority services to over 60 million Entrepreneurial Households across India and Latin America. Learn more atelevarequity.com.
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