Mumbai, Aug 10 (IANS): More than 40 companies, including Life Insurance Corporation of India, Tata AIA Insurance, ICICI Lombard, Zomato, Blinkit, and more, will offer jobs to youth at the first-ever Dharavi Job Fair to be held on Sunday, an official said on Saturday.

The job fair, a first of its kind on a large-scale at the Dharavi slum cluster, is being co-organised by the Dharavi Redevelopment Project Pvt Ltd. (DRPPL) and Sapio Analytics, an employment and skill training entity, aiming to transform the economic prospects of the locals.

The Dharavi Job Fair will open on at 9.30 p.m. on Sunday at the Shree Ganesh Vidya Mandir School on St. Kakkaya Road.

“The job fair is an initiative to foster the socio-economic growth of Dharavi, which has not witnessed large-scale employment opportunities. It symbolises hope and opportunity for the residents and aims to provide a single platform where many corporates shall be present,” said an official of DRPPL.

Accordingly, the younger generation of Dharavi will get a chance to explore diverse career prospects and interact with the representatives of some of the major business houses.

The fair will attract more than 40 prospective employers from different sectors, including financial institutions, insurance, retail, food delivery services and gig economy companies, said the official.

Dharavi is home to around one million people and has a thriving informal economy that plays the role of an integrator among several small industries and enterprises, employing thousands as daily wage-earners.

However, the modest neighbourhood in south-central Mumbai has seen limited opportunities in skill proficiency, as most people continue to carry out similar work with limited earnings due to lack of upskilling opportunities.

The DRPPL is a SPV between the Maharashtra government and the Adani Group which plans to transform and upgrade the lives of Dharavikars by providing them with modern housing while preserving their inherent entrepreneurial spirit.

“This human-centric transformation is about rebuilding spaces and reinventing the very essence of community living, dovetailing state-of-the-art imperatives of transportation connectivity, electricity, water, and internet while enabling a hygienic environment with civic amenities, all benchmarked with the best in class,” said the DRPPL official.