Bulalance – Fiji’s Very Own Freelancing Marketplace
Though not the default road of general people’s career path, freelancing has been a lot of people’s choice nowadays. Nevertheless, being a successful freelance or getting a good freelancer is not an easy thing to do. Let’s get the insider view and journey from Sagufta Janif, the CEO and Co-Founder of Bulalance, a freelancing marketplace connecting local Fijian talent to businesses and entrepreneurs all around the world.
History behind Bulalance
“I have my social enterprise. But when COVID-19 happened, I had to let go of some of my core staff, which meant more workload on me. So I decided to look for part time contractors who could come in and do some of the tasks for the company. But unfortunately, managing them and their contracts was time consuming.” said Janif, explaining her obstacles with human resources during this pandemic.
In order to get her plans going, Janif explains how she looked for other alternatives and found yet another problem to tackle. “Then, I turned to the freelancing platform, Fiver, where I was able to find a range of service providers, yet unfortunately i did not have access to credit card or visa card payment facilities. So eventually I conducted an analysis with all other small businesses and found out that they are all facing the same problems.”
“This is when I gathered a few of my developer friends and family to see how we can come up with a local solution, hence we decided to build our own freelancing marketplace with an offline payment solution.” Not long after that, her initiative to solve her initial problem came to implementation.
Impacts, Milestones, and The Team Behind Bulalance
Janis mentioned a few short and long term impact Bulalance could bring for the people and the environment, which are:
- SME’s could reduce their labor costs especially post pandemic
- Creating income generating opportunities for freelancers
- Customers can rely on our platform for verified and qualified freelancers
- Economic efficiency
- Remote work leads to lower greenhouse emissions and less chances of communicable infections and diseases
As of now, Janis also mentioned that Bulalance has reached these milestones:
- 1700 SME’ have registered to become our early adopters through our survey (local and international)
- 298 freelancers have joined our facebook group
- 2000+ freelancer applications received
- Received seed funding through the AIS forum competition
- Top 8 innovation at the Seedstars local competition
The team behind Bulalance consists of Sagufta Janif as CEO & Co-founder, Shafraz Buksh as Co-founder, Sana Ali Lal as Marketing and Sales advisor, and Sanish Lal as IT tech advisor.
