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E-lancing-IT services offered on a freelance basis
by individuals-is catching up fast in India with falling Internet
costs and the increasing lure of dollar income.
It is easy for companies to do business with e-lancers-IT
professionals who are driven by the proverbial entrepreneurial spirit
(or by cruel job uncertainties). They are always online, come cheaper,
are flexible to changes, hard working, and friendly in cross-cultural
settings.
More and more companies from the US and UK outsource
(especially smaller projects) to e-lancers. The calculation is that
unlike big companies that give attention to projects in proportion
to the order value, e-lancers would put in more effort and heart
into small projects, which are substantial orders for them.
E-lancing as a concept represents a win-win situation
to individual professionals in India too. For them it offers a life
of one's own taste, and freedom from acting out somebody else's
script from nine to God-knows- what time.
"What fuels the growth of the e-lance market
is the job insecurity and rigidity in IT firms," says A J Balasubramanian,
chief manager of Kaveri Infosys, Chennai. He adds: "Your job
is secured, if you have the right skill, talent, attitude and curiosity
to learn and work in new areas. However, lots of talented people
feel caged when they have to work in a nine-to-five environment.
They have to follow routine, which means they cannot experiment
and learn or pursue their own interests."
Balasubramanian says, "Acquiring different
knowledge and blending ideas are key to adding value, which is not
possible when you purely chase efficiency as in the nine-to-five
routines. And not many organisations respect their people's different
interests or understand that the attachment of the individual to
the organisation should be just only as much as required so that
they get best of both worlds-professional and personal."
Balasubramaian points out: "For the first
time in economic history, we could really work from anywhere in
the services segment with a PC, telephone and Internet connection
achieving cost reduction."
A new lease of life
For people who seek alternative values in their
work-life, e-lancing has become the starting point.
"This has literally changed my life,"
says G Rajesh Kumar, 25, an ace Web designer based at Chennai, who
runs his virtual Web design store, www.getusabledesign.com, from
his rented single-bedroom house. After working for three years in
a couple of software firms, Kumar became a full-fledged freelancer
when the dotcom crash made organisational jobs uncertain and unrewarding.
If you discount a few disadvantages like deceptions involving clients
not honouring their payment commitments, you can certainly count
on e-lancing, he suggests.
Today, Kumar earns "at least twice than what
a designer of my experience employed at a company is getting paid."
Besides, Kumar has time to go after other pursuits-he takes free
classes on self-development for children of his vicinity-this is
something he had always dreamt of doing but could succeed only after
he started off on his own. "The schedule generally is flexible.
For instance, I can start the work early in the morning straight
from my bed, even before taking bath," he says.
Agrees, Christopher Sahayam, who was a successful
e-lancer, now a director of a small Web establishment, www.chrisranjana.com,
"Basically you could fix up your own working hours and be flexible
about it. But on the negative side the onus is on you to get organised
and disciplined."
Kiruba Shankar (www.kiruba.com), who resigned
from his job a few months back as a senior executive, technical
communication, from a leading software firm to start an e-lancing
unit out of his newly purchased flat, points to yet another rewarding
aspect of e-lancing. He says, "When employed in a company,
you only get to work on one nature of work. For example, a software
coder gets to do only coding. He does not have to worry about sales,
marketing, design, salaries and the other economics. But as an
e-lancer, one needs to take care of both the business
as well as the technical aspects. This adds a lot more value to
the person. Gone are the days when e-lancers were considered to
be people unable to get full-time jobs. Now more and more people
are opting out of jobs to start off on their own." He asserts,
"My belief is that this is what makes an e-lancer all the more
a survivor."
The survival factor
Survival is based on skills-it's about the survival
of the highest skilled. "Clients respect quality and to survive
in this most competitive e-lance market one needs to be a real expert
in his respective fields," says Sahayam. He emphasises the
importance of domain expertise, reasoning that there is no scope
for interchange of ideas in an one-man work environment, and on-time
delivery of projects will not be possible if expertise has to come
from outside every time.
Thus specialisation, at least in any one particular
skill forms the basic qualification, and the lack of it, probably
the only entry-barrier, for launching an e-lancing career.
Net impact
According to practising e-lancers, if one has
the mental strength to withstand the initial hiccups, and the required
skill, he can take a plunge without major financial backing.
Affording Internet connection (or access) for
sourcing projects or communicating with partners is almost a non-issue
today what with the mushrooming browsing centres and launch of innovatively
priced broadband schemes. Considering that the Internet is the biggest
marketing arsenal for e-lancers, the reach of Internet plays a pivotal
role in the evolution of the e-lance era.
"Google is my marketing partner," says
Kumar. In response to the keywords: "web design" and "Chennai",
Google lists his website in its first result page itself. So, everyday
general queries hit his mail-box in sufficient numbers. For project
collaboration he uses Yahoo Messenger extensively-"It's the
elancers' favourite collaboration tool."
Sahayam points to the exclusive portals (or e-lance
exchanges, the online watering holes for the clients and e-lancers
to meet) like www.webdesignlance.com, www.gigalance.com, www.christianlance.com,
etc, that help e-lancers market their abilities.
Such marketplaces serve as the single biggest
source of projects from the US and UK, he says and adds, "There
is no dearth of projects. Companies in the US and UK outsource to
India for fraction of the costs and they get the same or better
product and best value for money."
Ravi Kumar (who e-lances for Indian and global
software firms), informs that the rating systems of online exchanges
lend credibility to the whole scenario. He says, "The important
thing is that both the client and the freelancers get to rate each
other at the end of the project. Both the parties would like to
get a good rating. So the freelancer aims to finish the project
properly and the client aims at making the payment in time. This
has been a very successful setup."
The future
Balasubramanian draws an analogy of film-making
to the way e-lancing works. He says, "When corporate chases
productivity and costs, e-lancing becomes a win-win tool for both
the individual and the corporate, with an option not to hold on
to each other when they do not want to work together. And still
both get the benefits when it is required. The movie industry has
been doing this for a very long time."
However, Balasubramanian thinks that at present
the trend among Indian companies is to add full-time employees,
as there is massive shift in IT outsourcing market with the markets
moving to Indian onsite models. According to him when Indian IT
companies were unsure of the growth and orders, they were contracting
people or e-lancing. Now when they want predictability, they would
rather work with full-time employers. "In some premium skilled
areas, there is a challenge for organisations to find right skills.
Here e-lancing works fine," he opines.
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