National | 8th October 2020: Bengaluru-based, Refrens.com, a startup that provides bookkeeping (Invoices, Quotations, Purchase orders, etc.) and payment solutions for freelancers and small businesses have launched a Marketplace for freelancers and service agencies to match with business who need their services. The marketplace is focussed on business services like software development, content writing, designing, website designers, photographers, social media marketing,`etc.
Refrens.com, which already has about 50,000 freelancers and agencies on its platform, aims to generate 10 Lakh freelance jobs by 2022 in India. Refrens has raised funding from popular Indian internet entrepreneurs including Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm and Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com
Refrens.com has been testing the marketplace a few weeks now and the initial response has been overwhelming. Refrens.com generated about 5000 leads and served about 1400 clients in this short span. The freelancers on the platform are from across India, including remote locations in tier-2, tier-3 cities. A lot of freelancers who hail from tier-2 or tier-3 cities are getting to working with clients from Metros. There are about 3Lac CAs, 4Lacs Digital Media marketing companies, 25L software professionals and other professionals in 1300 fields of expertise who constitute this freelance services ecosystem in India.
Naman Sarawagi, the founder of Refrens.com, commenting on the development said “Due to COVID19, companies have been forced to think about how they hire talent for their work. Large companies are skeptical of hiring full-timers due to the uncertainty in the macro-environment. Freelancers are going to constitute a large population of the working class in India soon. It is estimated that there will be 25Mn (2.5cr) freelance professionals in India by 2022. We aim to be the largest platform for them to find regular work, from India and developed western countries.”
The company aims to launch in the US and Canada before Christmas. Matching Indian freelance service providers with western economies will unlock a lot of growth for the Indian services industry.
