There is good news and bad news for any company that needs to hire a software developer or engineer today. On the plus side, the shift to remote work has vastly expanded the talent pool available – if your technicians never have to come to the office, it doesn’t matter where in the world they live, and you can hire skills and only experience. Less fortunately, finding and managing the best people in this market is challenging – and with a war for talent raging, there’s a real risk of being left behind.
This is where the Indian start-up super sourcing thinks it has discovered a gap in the market. Since its launch in February 2021, Supersourcing has become one of the world’s largest marketplaces for remote engineers. And now it has raised $500,000 in seed funding to help it accelerate growth even faster.
Supersourcing operates a platform for companies that need software engineers for specific projects or contracts. It has signed on hundreds of software development firms — small contractors, usually with 100 to 200 engineers on their books — to provide the workforce these companies need. Supersourcing matchmakes on behalf of the two parties; moreover, once an agreement is made, it manages the contract, makes sure the engineer gets paid, and monitors the performance so that both parties have an opportunity to give compensation.
“It’s a win-win situation on both the supply and demand sides,” said Mayank Pratap, one of the co-founders of Supersourcing and now the company’s CEO. “If you ask a CIO or startup founder about their biggest challenge, the answer is hiring. This is the ultimate talent war and I intend to solve it.”
Pratap states that both parties need his services. Agencies offering engineers have no way of pitching their specialists to a global audience. And when their engineers land contracts, managing these assignments is hard work; the agency has to deal with multiple employers to make sure the developers get paid and the contract goes well for both parties. Supersourcing takes both problems off your hands.
Companies that need technical support are also struggling. They know the talent is there, but they don’t know how to find it. And they certainly don’t know how to focus on engineers with the specific mix of skills and experience required for a particular job. Supersourcing, on the other hand, can deliver a shortlist of candidates almost immediately, detailing their skills, experience, and experiences of previous employers working with them.
Supersourcing founders believe companies need help hiring software engineers
“We do all the heavy lifting,” adds Pratap. “And once we’ve placed a candidate with you, we’ll take care of timesheets, payments, and performance monitoring.”
It’s a value proposition that seems to have broad appeal. In less than 18 months, Supersourcing has won 15,000 technicians through deals with more than 3,000 agencies, and signed up more than 500 companies looking for staff.
Those recruiting companies range from small start-ups to some of the big names in technology — examples include Amazon, Google, Stripe, Meta, Uber, Quora, and Gusto.
Supersourcing makes its money by charging commissions while handling contractor payments as well as fees for various additional services available on its platform. Revenues are growing at 20% per month, and the company is on track to reach more than $3 million in revenue this year.
Not surprisingly, that success has captured the attention of investors. Participants in the seed round include KubeVC and a long list of angel investors with high reputations in the tech sector, from Nitin Sethi, chief digital officer of Adani Digital Labs, to Saurabh Gupta, a senior program manager at Stripe.
Pratap says the funding will help Supersourcing double its own investment in engineering, build out its IT infrastructure and make further improvements to the platform. The funding will also support expansion into the US market, where Pratap sees particularly high demand for remote technicians.
That will put Supersourcing in competition with companies like Andela and Turing, two US platforms that offer a similar proposition, but Pratap believes that supply and demand in the software engineering market is growing so fast that there is enough business. “The market is still 95% disorganized,” he says. “With the flag of my country, I wanted to do this from India.”
