According to a recent report, India’s working age population last year was an almost unbelievable 983 million men and women. That’s more than four times the equivalent population in the U.S., and about three times the size of the EU working age population.
And, more than population is on the rise. Freelancing in India is growing as well. In fact, according to Business Today:
“India's gig economy, or the freelancing one, especially those who operate over the Internet, has taken off over the last three-five years. So much so, that one in every four freelancers are from India. The country dominates when it comes to software, with India contributing 50% of the global freelancers in this domain, a new report from payments company PayPal said.”
IndiaMicrofinance.com estimates that there are 15 million freelancers now working in India, and asserts that the freelance population in India may very well double within five years. Locally based online talent marketplaces like Truelancer, TouchTalent and Freelance India are expanding rapidly in India, as are global platforms like Freelancer, Fiverr and Upwork. And, the Payoneer study pointed out that a significant percentage of the work of Indian freelancers is for companies based in the U.S. or Europe.
So, it was with a good deal of interest that I caught up recently with Chandrika Pasricha, the founder of Flexing It and one of the leaders of #freelancerevolution in India. The company was founded by her in 2014 after a successful career in management consulting and was profitable shortly after an angel round of investment. At present, it represents over 70,000 independent professionals and is active beyond the Indian market in Singapore and elsewhere in SE Asia. In fact, it appears to be the largest platform of experienced independent consulting talent in Asia.
Flexing It describes itself as “a curated marketplace for consultants and on-demand expertise.”
There are certainly some similarities between Flexing It and other online Indian talent platforms. All serve international as well as domestic businesses. All are sought out by startups who need to build out their teams but may lack the reputation or financial resources to attract the top talent they need on a full-time basis. And, all are working with international large corporates.
But, as the firm’s vision suggests, Flexing It has taken an interesting approach to the Indian market. Rather than focus on the widest possible range of services - mixing gig and freelance work - or emphasizing technology, Flexing It has remained close to its founder’s roots in management consulting. While not a consultancy per se, Flexing It is a large marketplace for industry expertise and for the companies that require these consulting skills on a project or temporary basis.
Pasricha was very clear about this when she set up Flexing It. Her 2015 Tech in Asia profile said this about her vision for the company:
“According to Flexing Its founder and CEO Chandrika Pasricha, the startup derived from a change in mindset. “When we started, freelancing was associated with tech or creative roles,” she tells Tech in Asia. The model she had in mind for the website was an expansion of that thinking to the managerial disciplines...fields that weren’t offered in depth on existing freelance websites.”
Pasricha isn’t alone in recognising the opportunity to disrupt traditional management consulting. Harvard professor Clay Christensen had written extensively about the impact of management education and technology innovation on the consulting industry. In his view, it was inevitable that consulting would be disintermediated and the high cost of consulting would be disrupted. He was right. Besides Flexing It, other entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the disruption. Two of the better known consulting marketplaces are the Business Talent Group, a platform that provides interim expertise and curates project teams for Fortune 100 organisations and other clients. Similarly, Catalant has grown nicely under Rob Biederman and his partners, working with client companies like GE and Pfizer.
But Flexing It is one of the talent platforms that has seen the attractive opportunity to partner with management consulting as a path to growth. It and other firms recognised an interesting twist in opportunity created by the disruption of the consulting industry: consultancies are an eager and attractive client base for freelance consultants.
Those of us watching the freelance revolution are noticing that more and more consultancies see the freelance community as a growing part of their talent pool. Firms like PwC, EY, Deloitte and even McKinsey are blending project teams of full-time consultants with freelance experts who provide specific function, industry or tech expertise that the consulting firm needs but isn’t available on a project basis. In an agile world, client company executives aren’t very interested in serving as training grounds for young, brilliant but inexperienced Harvard MBA’s. They want experienced experts with directly relevant experience who can solve their problem faster and anticipate implementation challenges better.
And, while these firms have created their own proprietary talent platforms to attract freelancers – for example, PwC’s Talent Exchange and EY’s Gig Now – they are also increasingly turning to online talent marketplaces, rather than increase hiring of junior consultants, to close their skills gap.
How does Pasricha see the opportunities ahead for Flexing It? For her, there are several significant areas for growth. First, in order to meet the needs of their current client organisations, Flexing It is attracting new skillsets like data science, and digital transformation.
Second, the Flexing It team understands that its performance and reputation depends on how well the platform tends to and supports its community of business experts: although as a private company they won’t share specific numbers, Flexing It is one of the better performing marketplaces in terms of the percentage of freelancers winning work on the site. Beyond commercial opportunity, Flexing It is also providing important developmental support to freelancers through regular feedback from clients, and by sharing performance information on what key skills are in demand and what and how industries are utilising consultants, and by providing tools that help platform consultants manage and build their business.
Third, like other platforms, Flexing It is focused on adding a third leg to its business by increasing its longer term, multi-project, enterprise relationships with large corporates on both a regional and global basis.
Finally, Pasricha points out that remotely performed consulting work is growing rapidly and is hugely in demand by the independent experts on the Flexing It platform. For client companies, it’s a significant cost savings; in general, travel and expenses tack 30% of additional cost on to a typical consulting project budget. For the freelance consultants, it provides a broader range of experience (working with clients in another country or continent), better rates, and more flexibility and quality of work life.
Flexing It is an interesting example of innovation within the online talent marketplace space and speaks to the Indian freelance revolution. I’m looking forward to watching how their vision and organisation progress.
Sourced from Forbes- Contributed by Jon Younger