Built on People

By Shaji Kumar

Staffing in India has a history far older than the word itself.

Most business books are written from the boardroom. This one is written from inside the trade. Built on People traces the staffing industry's roots from pre-colonial village labour brokers and the thekedars of the railway age, through the License Raj, the 1991 liberalisation that opened the doors, the Y2K boom that gave India its first taste of global white-collar outsourcing, and the compliance, recession, and pandemic shocks that followed, right up to the gig economy and the four new Labour Codes reshaping the rules today.

Woven through the history is Capt. Shaji Kumar's own account of building a staffing and facility management company from a single desk in 1998 to an operation spanning sixteen cities, told through the lens of a former Indian Army officer who went looking for his first client with no name for what he was selling. Part industry history, part founder's memoir, Built on People is for anyone who works in staffing and recruitment, studies Indian labour and HR policy, or simply wants to understand the invisible system that connects millions of Indian workers to their next job.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9334528508
• ISBN13: 9789334528503
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Chaque Jour Publications
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"