Feelance Co.: Aims To Become One-Stop-Shop For Freelancers, To Start International Operations

BWDisrupt interacted with Harshdeep Rapal, Co-founder of Feelance Co. to know about how their venture is picking up in India & their plans to take on International operations

Harshdeep Rapal (Cofounder and CEO): Harshdeep is a serial entrepreneur with 10+ years of experience in management consulting, venture incubation and entrepreneurship. Prior to starting Feelance Co. Harshdeep was the heading the South East Asia region for a venture of Rocket Internet GmbH. Earlier he had started Earthen Kraft (an online store for handicrafts) and EazyMeals (a Food-Tech venture).

Talking about the new trends in the private industry Rapal said, “Workforce dynamics globally are undergoing a major shift right now. For a major chunk of the workforce, working 9 am to 5 pm for a single organization is no longer exciting. Working on short term assignments for multiple organisations in a single year is the new normal”

Subir Mitra (Cofounder and CTO): Subir Mitra comes with extensive experience in Alliance management and executive search. He has a string experience in building, nurturing and managing relationships with CXO level contacts. Subir has an MBA from SP Jain and MS in Information Technology from Virginia Tech University.

While sharing his point of view about this business venture Mitra added, "Selecting a consultant has continued to be a manual cumbersome process. Feelance hammers down this pain point by drastically reducing the due diligence process in identifying the ‘exact-fit’ consultant, against diverse projects."

With over 1.5 million ‘Super Temp’ Consultants who execute , India has a huge under-served market for Consultants; and Feelance is not only enabling these consultants to access projects that best qualify for them, but also equips them with the necessary support services to seamlessly execute the assignments. Feelance Co. is an online platform for clients to search and engage with freelance/independent consultants and consulting firms for short-term projects and interim roles.

Majority of the organisations across the globe are shifting towards a core-flex model. Organisations today want to have permanent employees for the functions that are core to their business and for non-core business engage with either independent freelancers or outsource to consulting firms outside the organisation. The trend is picking up fast in India. Freelancers have become one of the fastest growing section of the Indian workforce.

Top 5 Freelancing Skills that are much in Demand:
o IT and Application Development
o Web Design
o Creative Design
o Content Writing
o Online Marketing/Sales/Lead Generation

Feelance Co. started in January 2016 as a platform for freelance consultants and clients to connect with each other. In August, with 30,000+ registered consultants it became the largest platform for freelancers in India. Till now 500+ clients have used the platform to find on-demand talent for more than 700 assignments worth more than INR 2 Cr via the Feelance Platform. In July we launched the Preferred Partner Network where clients can directly work with our Preferred Partners who are verified and vetted by Feelance Co. and work with us on commission basis. This reduces the complete cycle of hiring a consultant from weeks to a few days and even hours in some cases. The clients are eager to engage with us in the Preferred Partner Network model as clients get access to highly rated consultants without having to search for them from various other traditional sources.

How is the Startup tackling a Problem?
Although, India with 15 million freelancers comes second only to the US in the number of freelancers in the world, but the ecosystem around freelance consulting is at very nascent stage. For clients there are two major problems 1) Finding the right-fit candidate for the role 2) Validating the skills of the consultant. While on one hand the clients are not able to discover the right candidates for their projects, on the other the consultants are not able to get discovered by the clients. This causes a lot of opacity in the system.

Looking at the Market Size & Opportunity in the Space: Currently the market size for independent consultants is estimated at $1.2-$2 Billion and for small consulting firms it is about $18-$20B per year. Feelance Co. currently is targeting three major areas in this market 1) Marketing and Branding Services 2) HR Services 3) StartUp Services.

What is you Business Model, tell us about the way it works?
On the Feelance Co. platform, the client has the option to post the assignment on the platform and receive applications from consultants or select the consultant for the required service. The consultants on the platform are pre-verified and vetted thus reducing the time for selection from weeks and months to just a few days and hours in some cases. The client pays the professional fees to the consultant and the consultant in turn pays facilitation fees to the Feelance Co platform. Currently majority of the revenue comes from commission charged from consultants on the total project value. Additionally the platform offers premium features both to consultants and clients which they can access through subscription or pay-per-use.

USP's that differentiate Feelance Co. from their Competitors:
o The platform offers clients to access senior industry on-demand talent which is not available on majority of other platforms for freelancers (which generally focus on very generic skills). Feelance Co offers its services in three key Service Buckets 1) Marketing & Branding 2) HR Services 3) Startup Support Services across Delni-NCR and Mumbai regions.

o The consultants skills are pre-verified and vetted. This provides additional assurance to clients looking to engage with the consultants. No other platform provides the skill validation that Feelance Co. provides

o None of the platform provides community support, tools and resources for consultants to execute the assignments. Feelance Co. provides featured for consultants of engage with each other by using the connections and discussion forums. The platform also provides services, tools and additional resources targeted at consulting community to enable the execution of consulting assignments in a seamless fashion. The features of the platform will not only enable the consultants to search assignments but also to execute them on the platform itself. The platform also aims to provide tools like project management, time & expense management, online invoicing and payments for the work done by consultants.

o We have launched The Feelancer in March’16. The Feelancer is the first online magazine for freelancers in Asia and second only in the world. This provides a platform for consultants to showcase their body of work and case studies across the consultant and client community globally.

What's Going on the Investment Front?
In December 2015 the venture received undisclosed amount in seed funding and strategic backing from Hut Partners, one of Asia’s leading Exec and CEO search firms with offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore and Shanghai. The operations were launched in Jan 2016.

How do you see the Future with Feelance Co.?
Currently Feelance Co. is in the process of closing the next round of funding and will then scale up in additional cities in India before moving to South East Asia and Middle East regions in next two years. The past experience of Harshdeep Rapal of building and scaling ventures for Rocket Internet in SEA region and strong connect of Hunt Partners in the region provides a strong platform for launching and scaling the services in the region. Feelance Co. is currently focusing on Mumbai and Delhi-NCR region and plans to expand to 8 additional cities in next one year. We are currently in talks with investors to raise about one million dollars to expand our geographical as well as services foot-print.