Many people stick to their boring jobs simply because they don’t want to work in any other city. On the other hand, small and medium businesses(SMB) face the problem of lack of quality employees. With the advent of Internet, there should be an online platform that bridges the gap between organizations and employees. Scuhio is here to do that.
About Scuhio and the story behind
Manish Shewarmani(L) and Prashant Pandya(R)
Scuhio is a ‘virtual workspace’ that bridges the gap between professional, students and organizations. Through Scuhio, users at a different location can work with an organization at a different place. Scuhio provides many tools to achieve this. For example, a discussion forum named ‘conception’ will allow users to discuss their queries. Another feature, ‘collaboration’, enables the organization to publish requirements for full-time or part-time jobs and internships. Interested people can easily apply and discuss about the job via email, chat or document. Another important feature, ‘creation’, enables organizations or individuals to work with their selected candidates on the website. Work can be easily managed through milestones, emails, chats, and to-do’s. Organizations pays the candidate through this section.
Scuhio was launched on 3 March 2014. Within a month, the website has 300 registered users with about 1000 visits. 4 online jobs/creations are currently going on. The startup is founded by Prashant Pandya and Manish Shewarmani. Prashant takes care of the marketing, designing and analysis aspect of the website. He holds a degree in MS in computer science from Stevens, USA. Before starting Scuhio, he has worked with Citi group and Barclays capital as a project manager. Mahish handles the technical aspects of the website. He holds a masters degree in Electric& computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.
Marketing, plans to earn money and competition
Scuhio relies on social media marketing to reach out to its users. Prior its launch, the application was tested with a few users in private beta to check the stability of the website. With the ‘Subscribe your email’ function on its homepage, the startup intends to attract more users. Scuhio is free for all. Though, organizations have to pay a minimal amount of Rs. 299 and a ‘payment authorized’ mark will appear on their profile. Scuhio charges 7% fee for each online payment transfer between owner and subscriber.
As for competition, Prashant explains, “When I describe Scuhio to others, people always ask that we already have few similar websites who provide networking, recruitment and freelancing in India, then how Scuhio is different from them? So, let me tell you the advantages of Scuhio over others: (1) Networking – Besides connection, through Scuhio’s virtual workplace, user can work with his/her connections online & convert his/her ideas into realities. (2) Recruitment – Before hiring, organizations can provide sample work or internship and monitor daily progress through virtual workplace. (3) Freelancing – India’s SME/SMB can find local talents and get the work done in Indian currency. Also, unlike other freelancing sites, talents don’t have to pay money to stay on top of subscription list of a job on Scuhio.com.”
Challenges faced, funding and future plans
Launching a startup is full of challenges. Finding quality designers turned out to be the biggest challenge for the Scuhio team. The startup intends to strive through Prashant’s marketing skills and Manish’s technology experience. The startup is bootstrapped for now. Though, after six months Scuhio team will seek some external funding. As for future plans, Prashant says, “In coming 2 years, our target is to cover more than 60% of the total SME/SMB (small and mid size organizations) of India and professionals/students of more than 300 engineering, business and medical colleges of India. To achieve this, we would like to start offline marketing to reach out different colleges and organizations of India. We also have plans to launch the mobile application for this portal.”
TTP’s Take
With the growing ambit of internet, Scuhio is a welcome initiative. It will considerably reduce time and efforts of organizations and professionals. The fact that the website has 300 registered users within a month of its launch is a good sign. With some players already existing in the market, Scuhio will have to use some shrewd marketing techniques to attract users. Such platforms usually face the chicken-egg issue with both sides of the equation, it remains to be seen how Scuhio team will handle it. TTP wishes Prashant and Manish all the very best!
