Indiez, a platform for hiring freelance coders, is merging with its rival, remote talent hiring service CrewScale. The move comes as the global pivot toward profitability nudges mergers among competitors.
Both firms help companies hire teams to build tech projects. Indiez co-founder Nitesh Agrawal told Tech in Asia that the merger will go toward scaling up the offerings for the combined entity. “There is a bigger opportunity for a [software-as-a-service] product in the remote work space,” said Agrawal.
Previously, Freelance Community Inc., the company that runs the Indiez platform and website, had 10,000 programmers. The merger will bring that number up to 16,000, Agrawal said.
Indiez has been profitable since it began operations in 2016. The company said it was bootstrapped for its first year before raising USD 500,000 in seed funding.
The merger comes as the Covid-19 outbreak forces companies to deploy remote working strategies. The spread of the illness has helped draw attention to systems and processes that help remote workers, which so far have worked on the fringes of the global tech industry.
Texas-based Crossover Markets, Inc., which runs freelancer-hiring website Crossover, is widely regarded as a pioneer in the remote tech working industry. Peers include Toptal and MainStreet, along with websites like Freelancer, Gigster, Fiverr, and UpWork.
Once Indiez and CrewScale merge, the entity will act as a one-stop shop for companies looking to hire a software development team. Remote working systems such as Slack, Asana, and Zoom will be integrated directly into the platform, along with project team leaders and coders, said Agrawal.
GoScale, CrewScale’s parent firm, counts companies like Amazon, Uber, Grab, Swiggy, Tokopedia, and Ola as clients. The startup has been profitable since its inception in 2017 and is growing at 200% year-on-year, it said. Indiez’s clients, on the other hand, include Domino’s Pizza, Uber, and Indian conglomerate Aditya Birla Group.
The merger will help expand GoScale’s operational capabilities in the US, helping it compete with the likes of Toptal, the company said.
“Indiez seemed like an obvious choice to partner with,” said GoScale Group Inc. CEO Raghu Bharat in a press release. “Together, we can become the top player in the domain.”
This article first appeared in Tech in Asia.