Phone-filmed practical tests that show if a technician can do the job
TL;DR Taskfilm checks whether an electrician, plumber or AC technician can actually do the work before an employer hires them. The candidate films a set practical task on a phone, software checks identity and completeness, and a trained assessor scores it. Facility-management firms, home-service platforms and staffing agencies pay per check.
Employers hiring technicians in India cannot trust certificates, and honestly, who can blame them? The CAG's audit of PMKVY, the flagship short-term skilling scheme, covered 56 lakh certified candidates and found only about 41% reported as placed, along with identical or edited photographs in some records and no geotagging in 84% of inspected cases[1]. One national news report on the audit led with dummy emails and closed centres[2].
So employers retest everyone. Large platforms do it in-house - one big home-services platform, with about 40,000 registered professionals, signed an NSDC agreement to train and certify its own workforce[3]. A mid-sized facility-management firm hiring 30 electricians a month has no such machinery. It relies on a supervisor's trade test at the site, which is slow, inconsistent and easy to skip when a contract starts on Monday.
What it does, in regulatory terms: an employer-commissioned pre-hire skill check, not a certificate. Taskfilm does not issue NSQF-aligned certification, which needs an awarding body and assessment agency recognised by NCVET[4]. Its report is advice to one employer about one candidate.
The candidate gets a link and a task card for their trade, like wire a switchboard with a given layout, find the fault in a supplied circuit, fit a trap under a basin. They film the task on their own phone in a set sequence, showing their face, tools and each step. Software checks the boring things, like whether the same person appears throughout, the timestamps run continuously, and every required step was shown. A trained assessor from the trade then scores the work against a fixed rubric within 24 hours.
The seed pitched AI video assessment, and I've reframed it. Today's models cannot reliably judge wiring quality or a safe joint from a phone clip, and a wrong pass sends an unsafe worker into someone's home. So AI handles identity and completeness, and a person who knows the trade gives the score.
The candidate pays nothing. The payer is the employer or platform that would otherwise run its own trade test - facility-management companies staffing offices and malls, home-services platforms onboarding technicians, and staffing agencies supplying workers to factories. The test price is a fee per completed check, cheaper than a supervisor's half-day and faster to arrange. That price is my assumption, since I couldn't find a published rate for practical pre-hire tests.
The CAG audit made certificate quality a public issue in 2025 and 2026[1][2]. Platforms have grown large enough to need thousands of technicians, and one home-services platform listed on the stock exchanges in September 2025[3]. Most candidates now own phones that record usable video, which removes the need for test centres.
There's no public figure for what Indian employers spend on practical pre-hire testing for blue-collar workers. The narrowest signal is one platform's own scale: about 40,000 registered professionals at that home-services platform, which built in-house vetting[3]. On the adjacent side, one large job app says 7 lakh+ MSMEs hire through it[5], and those employers get no practical check at all.
An Indian simulator maker sells VR rigs that assess welding, spray painting, HVAC and solar installation inside the machine[6]. It's strong for training centres but tied to hardware on site. Entry-level job apps list technicians but do not test what they can do[5]. Sector Skill Council assessment agencies run government scheme assessments, not on-demand checks for private employers. The gap is a quick, remote practical test that any employer can order per candidate.
| Difficulty | Moderate (43/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹55–95 L |
| Time to launch | 5–8 months |
Capture and identity checks are buildable with known tools. The harder parts are designing tasks that can be filmed safely at home with cheap kits, writing rubrics that two assessors score the same way, and keeping a pool of paid assessors fast enough for 24-hour turnaround.
Taskfilm needs no licence to give employers a pre-hire skill check. It does need care on data and on what it calls its reports.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI pass or fail a candidate on its own, especially on safety-critical trades like electrical work. A trained assessor makes the final call and signs the report.
Want to work out the AI layer for Taskfilm? Talk to Yash →
I like this for a founder with a facility-management, staffing or trade-training background who can sign two or three large employers early. If you want AI to do the scoring alone then it's a poor fit.
Prove first that employer-hired candidates who passed perform better in their first month than those who skipped the check.
Plan for roughly ₹55–95 L, covering the app, trained assessors, low-voltage test kits and sales to employers.
Not for employer-commissioned checks. You need NCVET recognition only to issue NSQF-aligned certificates, and you must comply with the DPDP Act for candidate videos.
Yes, wherever employers hire technicians at volume. Check local data protection law on recording candidates and any rules on skill certification.
The free Taskfilm validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the certification and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for employers and technicians, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Taskfilm or something close to it? The make-or-break work is a rubric that different assessors score the same way, and an employer willing to track results, which is the kind of thing I help founders set up. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.