The recently merged Anglo-Saxon freelance recruitment platforms, Elance and oDesk, have received more than $130M in investment from the Venture capital. Leading Spanish-speaking Nubelo has attracted $1.7M to date.
Elance and oDesk: the Anglo-Saxon leaders merge
Generating a lot of controversy among their users, the two leading online freelance recruitment platforms have recently announced their merger. Elance has received a total of $94M of funding and oDesk $44M. «Most positions on these platforms are geared towards IT professionals, where remote working is more common and job periods are shorter. It remains to be seen whether this model can be extended to other sectors such as cleantech, biotech, etc.,» analyses Diego Gutierrez from Abra Invest.
Nubelo, leader in Spanish-speaking countries, acquires Brazil's prolancer
In November 2013, a €1M round of funding was announced in Nubelo by Finaves, Caixa Capital Risk and Nazca Capital 200k in addition to the 200k contributed by Cabiedes in 2012. Part of the investment has been dedicated to the acquisition of the Brazilian competitor Prolancer, which has more than 50,000 registered users. Nubelo has announced its objective to open in the US in 2014 to connect the demand for Spanish-speaking professionals from US companies due to the increase in Spanish-speaking consumers.
Voice, Lamda and other specialised platforms
In all sectors, there are companies that know how to see the niches that are not covered by the volume leaders. This is the case of Lamda which aims to meet the dissatisfaction of highly qualified professionals who receive a lot of low-priced offers on large portals, which wastes a lot of their time and trivialises their qualifications. Lamda only accepts bids for jobs with a minimum income of 100$/hour. Another example is Voice which specialises in voice professionals.