A New Way of Tracking Talent Online
By Priyanka Akhouri
Mumbai, May 13, 2008

When you go to the market, you desire to pick the best valued quality product. But if the product is human talent and the market is online, it needs a better solution like the new LimeExchange website. This new portal brings together the talent pool, talent seekers, and service providers on a common platform using the online bidding process to meet various IT projects.

From the market perspective there is enough talent available globally, but there are not enough avenues to harness that talent and provide those creative and professional skills worldwide. However, there are companies that exist in the current space like E-guru, Elance, etc. that outsource freelance programmers, graphic designers, etc.

LimeExchange is the first talent online marketplace introduced by Lime Spot - a Web-based company that focuses on creating and delivering user-driven Web applications and services. LimeExchange is designed to help entrepreneurs, and individuals to outsource, connect, and collaborate globally. Through LimeExchange, entrepreneurs can gain competitive advantages of outsourcing, such as a flexible workforce, lower-cost labor, and access to specialized skills.

Sorabh Jerath, VP of LimeExchange (sales and marketing) said, "We realized that the business i.e. online outsourcing of talent is huge and in demand, and the number of users for the online global talent is rising immensely. This is where one party wants a service and the other is providing the service."

The services vary since there are various talents and unending demand list. The services differ from graphic designing, web programming, content and creative writing, designing, etc. Also it includes other services like legal services, data services, specialized services, freelance photo journalism, etc.

So what made Lime Spot introduce this kind of service?

The biggest challenge in outsourcing right now is zeroing in on a particular vendor, country, etc. Currently in the marketplace there are only a couple of players who have reached this level. Lime Exchange is an online service platform for the various vendors of talents and seekers for these talents- such as freelance journalism, photo journalism, content developers, transcribers, etc. "Lime Exchange is an online medium for people to outsource, where you can sit and select on the various option based on the credibility of the service providers. With Lime Exchange initiative we are providing businesses to flourish in economy where people can sit at home as well as earn a living," added Jerath.

According to Abhishek Mitra Gupta, VP (Technology) of Lime Spot, the need for introducing LimeExchange was that we being a part of Lime Group realized the need to bring out those hidden talents into the market. "This is why we are building products around those areas, and this as a penetration strategy based on the market research was found to be a suitable avenue to us. The concept started with India where the service providers can join the community on our website," said Gupta.

LimeExchange is the beginning of a vendor- user relationship. It helps in looking at the references, recommendations, suggestions and ratings posted by the users about that particular vendor and its services.

"As a buyer if you post a project and mention the estimated budget, then there will be a online bidding by various vendors. Based on the vendor's bidding, the buyer will examine the vendor's service quality, skills, past projects, consultancy cost, posted recommendations, reference and rating by other users. This subsequently helps the buyer to pick the prospective vendor for its project," added Jerath.

Further, Jerath said, "After the user has decided upon the vendor, LimeExchange will charge on the bidding fees for the project. On the completion and delivery of the project, we charge an 8% fee of the project but from the service provider. It's a way of bringing the offline way of doing business online."

Lime Group is a strong supporter of Open Source technology. "LimeExchange is built on Ruby on Rails technology. As soon as we decide onto launch our products we look at Open Source as our alternative straight away. We also use Linux, Apache, MySQL and other Open Source technologies," added Gupta.

The company will soon be launching an 'Answer feature' in LimeExchange where people can seek answers to their questions on different categories such as Java, Linux, etc. Meanwhile, the company plans to take this business to the next level and make it global in future.

"We have just completed the first phase. We had a target of over 1000 quality service providers and have successfully covered about 1500 service providers, primarily a lot of them from India. LimeExchange has bagged about 500 talented professional content writers and translators from India," stated Jerath.

India remains the core focus area of talent pool. Hence the company looks at India as a root place of service providers in the area of software application development, animation and graphic designing, and many more areas. However, Jerath reveals that the company already has plans to expand this business to countries like Russia, Canada, etc.

Related Links:
Simplify Online Shopping with mCheck
Online Collaboration to Reach Next Level