MissionKya is on a mission to connect the freelance workforce with clients & companies
Jaipur-based marketplace startup is simplifying outsourcing by bridging the gap between service providers and service seekers. With 750 registered users, the company is eyeing revenue of Rs 6 crore in the next two years.
Want a poster designed? Or need someone to handle your social media marketing? Asking around among friends and relatives could help, but logging on to MissionKya may give you a solution in double-quick time. MissionKya, headquartered in Jaipur, is a crowdsourced service marketplace that lets individuals and companies post their requirements and receive bids and proposals from pre-verified freelance experts and agencies. Another Upwork or PeoplePerHour? Not quite, for there are “perks” like a personal project manager and payment security.
Ayush Goyal, the 21-year-old founder, tells YourStory what the startup is all about.
MissionKya assigns a project manager to each client apart from providing constant customer support, keeping freelancers and clients in mind. That way, we help people get rid of the hassles of hiring freelancers online and get their work done on time.
This is best exemplified in the kind of needs the clients come up with.
A non-resident Indian, Anil Patil, had founded an app, Ozyveg, to help people get fruits and vegetables cleaned through ozonisation. He needed to create animated videos explaining the app and had tried several outsourcing services. But he couldn’t find a comprehensive solution that was also cost-effective.
“I didn’t mind if the talent was coming from Tier-I or Tier- II cities as long as it was competent and cost-effective. I was surprised how MissionKya was constantly in touch with me anytime I needed, solving doubts and queries. I was especially impressed by the delivery and expertise,” Anil says.
Agribolo, a prominent agricultural startup, is also using MissionKya for its marketing needs.
Ayush feels their policies set them apart from other freelance work aggregators.
“We provide time back guarantee as we feel providing money back (in case of any problem) to the client is not a big deal. The whole point is who will compensate for the time wasted by an incompetent service provider over a particular project?” he asks.
“Our foremost priority is to avoid this situation at all costs. If it does happen, we intervene immediately, assigning the project to a more trusted expert by giving him half the time. Then we monitor the project so it closes faster,” he adds.
A startup idea born in college
Ayush was in the third year of his B.Tech course at Amity University, Jaipur, when this idea for MissionKya came to him.
“I remember I didn’t do so well on my exams because of this. I knew there was a gap in the Indian outsourcing market and I was confident I could make a difference,” he says.
He forked out the Rs 2,000 for domain registration and borrowed Rs 18,000 from his family to get the product rollout on track.
“I had two failures behind me. When I was in my first year, a friend and I had started a small business of converting jpeg images of books/novels into handwritten notepad files (a 100-page book needed to be submitted in 7 days), but we were cheated by the vendor. The second time, I started trading in the share market and lost all my savings,” he says.
The setbacks made Ayush cautious about MissionKya’s model and he realised that any startup should charge for a good service. His bootstrapped startup was a free service until December 2016, after which he decided to charge for the quality of services he was providing through the platform.
How are freelancers benefiting?
Gajanand Bohra, a freelance social media marketer, was doing well but wanted to expand his business with a variety of clients in his portfolio.
“But for that I needed to hire at least two business development managers, which escalated my monthly costs. When I found MissionKya, I started spending more time on it reading bids and finding work. Within a week, I got my first project worth Rs 25,000 without any extra cost,” Gajanand says.
Ayush says MissionKya is “not just for professional help”.
People can connect and ask for a helping hand for some small task against a bounty. We have helped people with odd jobs such as arranging a midnight surprise and suggestions for wedding vendors under the odd jobs category
MissionKya is currently supplying experts in the field of photography, web and app development, construction and architecture, legal affairs, CA and taxation, content writing, digital and offline marketing, designing and creativity, data entry, and events. Each category has been created like a product package so it’s a transparent platform when it comes to pricing.
However, Ayush reiterates that the scope of “missions” is not confined to these sectors; the platform can help get any kind of job done.
MissionKya also has a bidding system much like other similar platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer or PeoplePerHour.
“We charge our service provider a straight 10 percent as a commission (including all the mandatory online fees, taxes if applicable). In return we source clients; in most cases, we close sales as well. We don’t charge the clients anything but offer a project manager, close quality monitoring, assurance of timely delivery and payment security, ” Ayush says.
Customer is king
Statistics show that the global market size of outsourced services stood at $76.9 billion in 2016. In India, the outsourcing market is becoming harder to measure even as more and more industries start to outsource heavily. The problem is that most of the outsourcing work is unaccounted for and it is tough to evaluate the market.
With a team of six people, MissionKya has worked its way up to 750 registered users, including service providers and clients.
“We have made revenues of approximately Rs 22.4 lakh without spending a single penny on marketing. We now have projects of about Rs 3.6 lakh in the pipeline,” Ayush informs.
He says the time he spent setting up and growing MissionKya taught him “two important lessons”.
I learnt that customer support is the key. So no matter what it takes, never leave your customer unattended. Secondly, never hesitate in seeking help from people. You cannot run a startup alone; then it won’t be a startup
The startup is now eyeing a few larger enterprises for yearly/quarterly contracts of managing and fulfilling their outsourcing requirements, be it small ones like poster design or large ones encompassing sales, marketing and development.
“I have no doubt we can hit a revenue of Rs 6 crore in the next two years. We plan to go global in the next four years,” Ayush says.
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