Demand for freelancers is on the rise. Much of this is down to the competitiveness of the industry. The latest figures produced by Forrester suggest that the amount of expenditure used on outsourcing is expected to rise around 6 percent this year. To help in completing this arduous task, companies such as Ford and Cisco are employing the likes of Tara AI.
The company behind Tara AI is San Jose-based startup, Tara Intelligence. Tara AI works by matching freelancers to projects that need completing, based on their skill set. The way it does this is through the use of a scraping engine that determines which programmers worked on which parts of the code, enabling them to see who is best for the task in hand.
“Developers give us access to their Github,” explains Tara AI CEO and co-founder, Iba Masood. “We see projects similar in nature to what you are trying to build. And then we connect you to the right and available talent.” To make it fair for everyone, developers are paid flat rates for the job that’s needed that’s determined by how difficult it is to perform. That way, regardless of the person’s age or sex, they will all be offered the same fee.
“Some people are better at negotiating,” said Masood. “But we think developers should be paid based on their actual abilities and the work they deliver.” Tara AI’s competition comes from the likes of tech consultancy firms such as Insight Global or Tata as well as freelancer workplace platforms such as Upwork and Codementor.
Just recently Tara Intelligence raised $3 million in investments to develop the platform to cater for businesses who need contractors with specific programming skills, particularly in connection with artificial intelligence. Some of the company’s existing investors are GSV, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, Moment Ventures, Y Combinator, and Lattice VC.
The company employs around 12 full-time employees at the moment, but is hoping to use some of that funding to grow that to around 30 or so in the forthcoming year. It will also establish a new office over in Buffalo, New York. The next challenge for Tara Intelligence will involve the development of bug prediction algorithms that will help programmers cut down the time it takes to finish off their code dramatically.
Source CNBC
