Anandram Sarda, a chartered accountant in Hyderabad who has done his articleship from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, finds the concept of a crowdsourced referral platform far more cost effective against traditional methods for job referrals.
MintMesh, a crowdsourced referral platform for jobs and service providers to cultural events leverages technology, specifically using machine learning and artificial intelligence systems to find an accurate referral. The startup is in the middle of closing a seed capital round of up to $1-million from Indian and the US-based investors within the next few months.
“Once an individual downloads the app, it automatically syncs their phone contact list to the app, ensuring the end user can opt for an unpaid referral or a paid referral ranging from Rs 300 to Rs 5,000 from a trusted network,” said Rahul Shah, cofounder of MintMesh.
Once an end-user gets on to the platform and sends out a referral, paid or unpaid, to their network, individuals within their location receive the request. “After the second user receives the referral request our algorithm carries out a smart search suggesting the people from their network they could refer, they then send an introductory message about the referral to the end user,” added Shah.
If the end user is satisfied with the referral and has opted for a paid referral, the individual makes the payment using their debit or credit card through payment gateways, ensuring the person who has made the referral receives the reward. MintMesh monetizes upon this product using a commission-based model, taking 15-20% commission from each paid referral. Over time, the platform plans to look at an advertisement based revenue model.
As a form of payback for being active on the platform, the users earn social currency points for making referrals for a wide variety of reasons ranging from cultural events to job offers.
The startup launched its beta version of the app in November. Through a pilot programme they found three out of every five users were actively making referrals on the platform and up to 15% of the users would opt for a paid referral. Most of the parties who would opt for a paid referral were service providers and businesses.
According to the startup, the return on investment for businesses is higher than traditional methods. “We are reducing the cost of acquisition of a new client by upto 60%, for instance, a traditional company looking to hire an IT engineer for Rs 10 lakh, will pay roughly 1 month’s salary upto Rs 80,000 to get qualified leads,” said Sunil Nair, Co-Founder of MintMesh.
“It takes up to 60 days usually, using the app you could get 20 qualified referrals for Rs 500, spending up to Rs 10,000 and you have a 90% chance of getting the job,” he adds.
MintMesh aims to save on time by sending out the referral within 30 seconds and receive responses in real time that are algorithmically accurate, based on organized data within their database.
With plans of reaching over 1,50,000 users, the platform targets Rs 250-crore gross monetary value of paid referrals by the end of the 2016-2017 financial year.
Source: The Economic Times
