Indiez, an online talent platform which focuses on software developers, has received around Rs 3.2 crore ($500,000) in its seed funding round. The funding comes from Haresh Chawla, who is currently a partner at True North Co.
Prior to this funding round, the company was bootstrapped. Announcing the funding round on its Medium blog post, the company said that it will used the raised funding to build technology and expand into US market.
Commenting on this, Nitesh Agrawal, co-founder of Indiez, said,
The way we work is going to evolve phenomenally now and technology is going to play a critical role in this paradigm shift. By Indiez we are doing our bit to shape up the #futureofwork. We’re focussing on software because, 99% of the world’s tech is yet to be built.
Indiez was founded in 2016 by Nitesh Agrawal, Ishan Shrivastava, Archit Kejriwal and Amrose Birani. It operates an AI-based platform to get leading talent for the software development work. After roping in clients, the platform puts together the team of community members to ensure the fulfilment of the projects.
To generate revenue, the company charges 20 percent cut on every project. The majority of the project payouts are disbursed to the team members working on it.
The company says that it has been profitable since its inception. But, it admits that bootstrapping was a challenging thing as it used to struggle to even pay salaries to its team members.
Haresh Chawla, who invested in the company, is mostly known for his leadership role as founding CEO of Network 18 group. Under his leadership, Network 18 group became a media giant with 11 TV channels reaching 300 million viewers.
He is also credited with for building some of India’s largest and most well-known internet businesses, including Moneycontrol, Bookmyshow, Yatra, Firstpost and Homeshop18.
The startup, which is present in Bengaluru and San Francisco, claims to have over 330+ freelancers on its platform. That includes 230 software developers, 60 designers, and 40 product managers from over 32 countries. The company further claims to have worked for over 160+ clients including Aditya Birla, Lodha, Euronet, and Upgrad.