Scuhio is an online ecosystem which allows individuals to learn real life expertise and earn money via collaboration. Started by Prashant Pandya and Manish Shewarmani in March this year, the Ahmedabad startup based website already has more than 1000 registered users. In a conversation with the co-founders, we understood all about the startup. "Scuhio means 'School' in Greek. In School, students learn new things by collaborating with their teachers and other students. We wanted to make a similar platform to bridge the gap between organizations, professionals and students”, says Manish. Scuhio uses 'Virtual Workplace' & 'Social Network' concepts to bridge this gap.
With Scuhio's 'Social workplace network', users from different areas can work with trusted partners in spite of being at different locations. Scuhio provides the following tools to achieve this:
- Conception: A Discussion forum, where Users can ask questions on any subjects/topics using tagging and get the answers from others.
- Collaboration: Give and Get Work, where an organization can publish requirements for full-time, part-time, internship or marketing jobs, and Individuals can apply and discuss their suitability using chat, email and document sharing. Here Individuals can also publish their partnership requirements to find best partner and convert their ideas into reality.
- Creation: Manage your work, where organizations or individuals can work with their selected candidates online. Work management will be done via Milestones, To-Dos, Chat, Email and Document Sharing. Organizations can pay candidates for their work through this section.
We asked Prashant why he started Scuhio, he said "With 5 years of experience in USA, I came back to India to start my own IT Company. I realized that there were a lot of problems in hiring good candidates. A lot of my friends couldn’t hire full-time employees for all the departments like accounting, HR, IT product designing etc. which delayed their projects. On the other hand I saw a lot of people stuck with boring jobs to stay close to their families." Thus came the idea of building a platform through which small firms can get trusted resources in local currency and talented people can find good work without having to stay away from their family.
Currently Scuhio.com is completely free for all. Organizations, Professionals and Students can register for and use all the tools for free. However, they do have very minimal monetization in place for now.
- Payment Verified collaboration: Organizations will have to pay Rs 299 to mark their work posting as "Payment Authorized". This will show that owner of a work is committed and really in need of suitable candidate.
- Transaction Fees: Scuhio charges 5% fee for each online payment transfer between owner and subscriber.
Scuhio's biggest advantage is its "Social Networking Features". Currently they are many freelancing sites but they don't have such features to build the trust between client and service provider. Scuhio's connection and collaboration tools allow users to connect, collaborate and find the best match based on their Facebook and LinkedIn friends reviews. "We also have open discussion feature, Conception, which allows user to discuss on open issues and find the best compatible partners. Because of such social networking features, client will get better trust on the service provider", says Manish. Based out of Ahemdabad, Scuhio has already completed 2. Currently, there are 4 live creations/jobs going on in different fields, like 'Mobile App Development', 'Social Media Marketing', 'SEO' and 'Date Entry'.
They are looking for funding to expand their business and complete at-least 500 projects in the coming two years. They will soon start offline marketing to reach out organizations of India and make a mobile app for the portal to make it easy to access and use. As a message for future entrepreneurs, Prashant suggested to pair up with someone who complements your skills. “I have experience and interest in marketing and client handling while Manish has experience and interest in technology. This makes us a great team”, he added.
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