Sea and Job
Sea and Job is a Mumbai-based maritime media and employment platform serving India's shipping industry. It is the publishing venture of the Sea Line Group, best known for seajob.net, the shipping jobs portal launched in 2004, and for SeaAndJob magazine, a fortnightly shipping magazine and newsletter launched in 2007. Together, the job portal and the magazine form an integrated service for seafarers and shipping companies: the portal connects marine officers and crew with employment on vessels worldwide, while the magazine publishes shipping news, articles, interviews and job advertising for the industry. The ventures were honoured together at the Economic Times Industry Leaders Award West 2020, where they received the title of Preferred Shipping Job Portal and Newsletter.
Founder and the Sea Line Group
The Sea Line Group was founded by Roni Abraham, a marine engineer, in March 2004. Abraham founded the group with the purpose of bridging the gap between seafarers and shipping companies through digitalisation, which was lacking in the maritime sector at the time. The group's first venture, launched in June 2004, was seajob.net, created to give seafarers an easy and hassle-free job portal. From that single initiative, Abraham built a group of related services — the magazine in 2007, a shipping directory in 2010 and a mobile app in 2015 — each extending the same mission of connecting the Indian shipping fraternity through dependable information.
Seajob.net job portal
Seajob.net is the group's flagship and the website recorded for Sea and Job in media directories. It is a maritime job site for marine jobs worldwide, on which all jobs are posted by licensed manning agencies and maritime companies. Candidates can search for jobs across the shipping industry: all ranks, officers and crew can find positions on all types of vessels, including cruise ships, and the portal also carries jobs on board ships, on shore, ashore and in offshore vessels. The portal states that it enjoys the highest number of marine officers registered with it among Indian shipping job portals, and it is recognised and accepted by the Indian shipping fraternity as a professional, safe and secure seafarer job portal, as well as an effective advertising site for companies and institutes. Registration and validation through the portal, and later through its app, structure the candidate experience: once registered and validated by the administrators, a seafarer can search, shortlist and apply for jobs, and use a chat feature for interaction between companies and candidates. Trainees can also search and apply for maritime courses through the same system.
SeaAndJob magazine
In May 2007 the group launched SeaAndJob magazine, a fortnightly shipping magazine — described in its award coverage as a fortnightly newsletter — that grew with every issue to become, in the group's account, the leading shipping magazine of its kind, widely circulated all over India and subscribed to by individuals, companies, institutes, seamen's clubs and libraries. The magazine contains information about not just the shipping world but also the world outside it, delivering articles, columns and interviews alongside its industry function: it is an effective medium for shipping and manning companies to advertise marine jobs and to promote their organisations by publicising internal activities such as seminars, sports events and parties. In its digital form the magazine is distributed free as an e-magazine in PDF format, a format chosen because it can reach seafarers while they are sailing beyond regional boundaries — a distribution solution matched to a readership whose workplace is at sea. The Sea and Job website continues this publishing role online, carrying shipping news alongside access to the latest magazine.
Shipping directory and mobile app
In 2010 the group launched the first edition of the SeaJob Shipping Directory, responding to patrons who conveyed the need for a directory containing accurate and updated information about the industry; the directory was then published annually, with the group emphasising the pains taken to ensure the information in each new issue was accurate and adding further useful information in successive editions. In 2015 the Sea Line Group launched the Seajob mobile app for Android and iPhone, adapting the portal to modern technology so that seafarers could register and edit their information at a single touch, search the latest worldwide marine jobs, shortlist and apply from their phones, and use the app's chat feature. The app is headquartered with the group in Mumbai, India.
Recognition
The group's two principal ventures were honoured jointly when Seajob.net and SeaAndJob magazine received the Economic Times Industry Leaders Award West 2020 title of Preferred Shipping Job Portal and Newsletter, awarded by the Times Group platform. The award coverage noted that the ventures had delivered their services for sixteen years by that point — counting from the portal's 2004 launch — and described the magazine as a trusted and ethical maritime publication with an extensive database of subscribers from various verticals in the industry. The group has also associated its name with industry honours of its own, including the Seajob Indian Anchor Awards, through which the platform recognises members of the shipping community.
How the platform serves seafarers
The practical value of Sea and Job lies in the structure of seafaring employment. Indian officers and crew form one of the world's largest seafaring workforces, but their jobs are arranged through licensed manning agencies and shipping companies, often at short notice and for contracts aboard vessels anywhere in the world. A centralised, trusted portal reduces the friction and risk in that market: seafarers register once, are validated, and can be matched to vacancies across vessel types and ranks, while companies reach a large pool of registered officers. The magazine complements the marketplace with community and information — news, interviews and company activities that keep shore-based and sailing readers connected to their industry — and its free digital distribution ensures that connection continues while a reader is on contract at sea.
News publishing online
The Sea and Job website functions as the group's continuing news face. It publishes shipping news items — international maritime and energy shipping developments among them — alongside the group's service content, and it promotes the current edition of the SeaAndJob magazine with a free PDF download, extending the fortnightly's reach to readers who no longer receive it in print circulation. Its pages restate the group's founding proposition for new readers: that the Sea Line Group is recognised by the Indian shipping fraternity as a professional, safe and secure seafarer job portal and an effective advertising site for companies and institutes. The site thus works simultaneously as a news portal, a magazine distribution point and an entry route into the jobs service, which is the combination recorded for the title in online news directories: a maritime portal publishing shipping industry news and seafarer job information from Mumbai.
Place in Indian maritime media
Within India's online media landscape, Sea and Job occupies the maritime employment and trade niche. It is classified among online news portals for its shipping news and magazine publishing, but its distinctiveness is the combination of media with a jobs marketplace, a directory and a mobile app under one group, all built from Mumbai — the centre of India's shipping and manning industry. Founded on a marine engineer's idea in 2004 that digitalisation could connect seafarers and companies, the Sea Line Group's ventures remain among the established names through which India's shipping fraternity finds work, advertises vacancies and reads its own industry news.
