Sriperumbudur comes alive after 7 p.m. Fast-food carts light up, groups of migrant workers stream out of factory gates towards their accommodation or to dinner, and narrow lanes fill with activity in a town built around manufacturing. There is a sense of relief on the faces after the toil of a full day. Tucked between the automobile and electronics plants that have made this Tamil Nadu industrial corridor famous are three- and four-storey buildings housing paying-guest accommodation for men and women. Many of these buildings have been put up by local landlords to meet the demand from workers who want to live close to their workplaces. Each resident pays a minimum of ₹2,000 a month to share space with at least four other people.
‘Earn and learn’
However, Ramesh (name changed), a 23-year-old from Bhopal, does not have to worry much about this. He arrived in Sriperumbudur a year and a half ago after his elder brother told him about an “earn and learn” programme at a multinational manufacturing company. The four-year programme starts with a monthly pay of around ₹10,000. About ₹1,000 is deducted for food and transport and another ₹1,000 goes into a recurring deposit scheme, he said.
Over the four years, Ramesh will work in several departments of the company. He expects to be offered a job at the end of the programme. His goal is what workers on the programme call “4+2”. That means four years of training, followed by two years of work experience, after which he hopes to leave with a diploma and an experience certificate. For Ramesh, there is one less thing to worry about while he is in Sriperumbudur. He does not have to find a place to stay in a town where Hindi is not widely spoken. The company provides him accommodation.
Karan Chauhan (name changed), 19, joined the same programme at the same company about two months ago. He was sent by his family in Mumbai after personal circumstances forced him to quit a diploma course. Like Ramesh, he is among the young migrants who have come to Sriperumbudur for work and training. For them, the industrial corridor offers a job, accommodation, and the possibility of a better future.
Well-managed services
It is this growing migrant workforce, ranging from young trainees to experienced factory workers, that a small group of companies is now seeking to serve through professionally managed accommodation and other services.
In accommodation units run by professional operators, there are bunk beds, some space to play indoor games, food arrangements, spacious rooms, and facilities for yoga. Records of residents are maintained, adding another layer of organisation to what is otherwise a largely informal housing market around the industrial corridor.
Companies have traditionally used a mix of in-house accommodation, rented rooms, and private hostels to house workers around industrial clusters. Now, companies such as Nia and Manzl are building businesses around the same requirement. Nia describes itself as something broader than a housing provider. “We are labour infrastructure with a roof, not housing with jobs attached,” the company said in written responses to questions from The Hindu. Its model combines managed living with work continuity and everyday essentials such as meals and groceries and telehealth.
All in one: A dormitory-type accommodation for migrant workers at Oragadam. It provides shared residential rooms with bunk beds, space
to play indoor games, food, and facilities for yoga.
| Photo Credit:
B. JOTHI RAMALINGAM
Wide client base
Nia said it currently operates across four industrial corridors (NCR, Chakan in Pune, Bengaluru, and Sriperumbudur) and serves more than 10,000 members. Its client base spans automotive, electronics, manufacturing, logistics, and IT services. Manzl, which operates in Tada and Sri City and has identified a location at Oragadam, describes itself as an industrial housing platform. Its business covers construction, facility management, and a digital worker management platform. It provides accommodation ranging from dormitory-style housing for shop-floor workers to corporate housing for white-collar employees.
Both companies say living conditions can affect whether or not workers remain with an employer.
Nia describes worker infrastructure as “a strategic lever on retention and output”. Manzl co-founder Rohit George said the demand is being driven by the location of new manufacturing plants and the scale of hiring. He pointed to industrial clusters such as Sriperumbudur-Oragadam, Sanand (Gujarat), Chakan (Maharashtra), and Narasapura (Karnataka), where plants are being built, away from established housing markets. He said some clients who previously rented rooms from local landlords, operated their own hostels, and separately arranged food, housekeeping and security, are now looking to hand the entire function to a single provider.
“Today a client hands over the whole thing to one provider. The building, the services therein, and the reporting layer on top,” he said. “The shift is from procuring rooms to outsourcing a function.”
The services being sought now go beyond accommodation, according to Manzl. They include food, housekeeping, security, utilities, transport, connectivity, and recreation. Its technology platform also provides employers with information on occupancy and rostering, along with onboarding, offboarding, and a multilingual helpdesk for residents.
Manzl said electronics and semiconductors are seeing the fastest adoption, followed by automotive and components. It expects textiles to see more outsourcing of accommodation too, given its large factory workforce and historical reliance on in-house hostels.
The pitch to employers is partly built around retention. Nia said its internal cohort-based tracking shows worker retention rising from around 53% to about 70% among members on professionally managed living, measured through Day-30 retention. The company also stresses that better accommodation is not a substitute for better wages. “Infrastructure complements better wages. It doesn’t compensate for lower ones,” Nia said.
Secure housing
The company’s model differs from conventional employer accommodation in another way. Nia says workers do not automatically lose their accommodation if they leave their employer. A worker can continue living in a Nest while looking for another job. The membership can shift from an employer-linked arrangement to a direct one until the worker is placed again. “Losing a job shouldn’t mean losing your home too, especially for a migrant worker far from family,” the company said.
Elevar Equity, which has invested in Nia, sees the model as part of a wider formalisation of the ecosystem around migrant workers.
Managing partner of the firm Jyotsna Krishnan said workers often migrate to industrial centres with specific savings goals. Poor housing, food, and other services can eat into those earnings.
Emerging category
Elevar describes “comprehensive worker infrastructure” as an emerging category. It sees an opportunity to formalise the existing ecosystem of unorganised hostels and fragmented services rather than simply replace it. It also sees a change in how companies view worker attrition. The investor said the problem is increasingly being viewed not only as a recruitment or wage issue but also as an infrastructure issue. But the shift is not widespread yet.
An executive of a large manufacturing company, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the company maintains its own systems for housing and managing workers and does not currently use external operators of this kind.
Very large companies generally do not opt for such arrangements because their requirements around scale, specifications, and control are different, the executive said. The company could consider external arrangements if need be, but is not doing so at present.
A second executive from another large manufacturer said the company uses a mix of internal and external arrangements. The executive also stressed the importance of organisations caring for contract and migrant workers in a manner comparable to their direct employees.
That suggests the emerging market for specialised accommodation operators is not yet replacing employer-run housing across the manufacturing sector. Different companies are using different models based on their requirements.
The emergence of these companies comes as the government looks at worker accommodation as part of the infrastructure needed for manufacturing. The Union Budget 2024-25 proposed rental housing with dormitory-style accommodation for industrial workers through a public-private partnership model, with viability-gap funding and commitments from anchor industries.
NITI Aayog’s December 2024 report on ‘Site Adjacent Factory Employee Accommodation’ recommended a market-driven model for long-term dormitory-style accommodation near workplaces. It envisages private developers playing a role in developing and operating such housing, with government support including viability-gap funding. The report said such accommodation could facilitate labour mobility, improve productivity, and worker welfare and retention. It also recommended treating workers’ accommodation as critical infrastructure for India’s manufacturing growth.
Only complementary
For Nia, the role of private operators is complementary to the existing welfare systems rather than a replacement for them. The company said it operates alongside schemes such as One Nation One Ration One Card, ESIC, EPFO, and e-Shram.
Nia also distinguishes its role from the employer’s statutory responsibilities. It said its role is to execute the legally required floor around accommodation and welfare and then provide services beyond those minimum requirements.
For Ramesh and Karan, much of this distinction is not visible. What matters to them is the job, the room, and the opportunity to build a future away from home.
