When it comes to solving problems faced by recruiters, Singapore-based Independents focuses on a unique one faced by the marketing industry.

In 2022, Salesforce revealed that one out of every three marketers struggles to find the right talents with the right skills. Companies already rely heavily on external partners, freelancers, and independent contractors for an array of services, including branding consultancy, content strategy, AI content generation, digital marketing, and media buying.

This raises a few problems: the extensive effort involved in sourcing talents from a broader regional pool and the question of how to achieve objective talent assessment.

This is why Independents aims to tackle the problem by streamlining the burden of interviewing, recruiting, invoicing, and handling legal contracts—all achieved through a single platform enabled by AI and data.

The solutions can match its vast database of talents to suitable marketing projects within 48 hours, resulting in a cost reduction of 30-50 per cent compared to traditional agencies.

By considering skills, portfolio references, industry and geography experience, budgets, team dynamics, and client ratings from past projects, Independents swiftly identifies the most suitable short-term hire talents for brands and agencies. It also offers project management tools for its users.

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“Our matching solution differs from other competitors’ platforms by adding a deeper and more nuanced search. Most freelance platforms match through the required industry skill of the talent, the output or asset required and the rating of previous projects,” explains Independents CEO Jatinder Sandhu to e27.

“While our AI system matches this, it improves on it further by incorporating a talent’s years of experience in the creative industry to identify their seniority, as well as a creative review by an industry panel of creative directors to help ascertain the level of creative ability. This provides our clients with a much more nuanced search that has resulted in over 70 per cent of repeated projects by our clients who are happy to keep working with the talent we identify for each specific project, proving our belief that ‘better matching means better marketing’.”

The company’s client base ranges from agencies serving clients seeking creative output or products as well as small- to mid-sized companies with a lean marketing team that needs support for very focused projects.

Making milestones

Independents recently took part in a project with the DBS Innovation team for the DBS Xcellerator programme, where it was supposed to secure 250 B2B sign-ups within 14 days for the niche sector of sustainability. The startup was able to tackle the challenge within 48 hours; it also executed a social media campaign within just eight days, exceeding the sign-up target by at least 50 per cent.

“Our project with the DBS innovation team was about putting our ability to find the ‘right’ creative team in a super fast turnaround with a limited budget while still making sure quality and, most importantly, ROI’s were met. Normally, a digital agency is bound by the staff it has available within its department … while other freelance platforms can expect to take at least a week to identify potential candidates, interview them, work out costs and contracts before starting the project,” says Sandhu.

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Independents says that it currently has a pool of over 405 talented individuals from Asia that includes AI specialists, writers, designers, digital marketers, art directors, strategists, and account managers. Three founders and its tech team currently run the startup itself; it is expanding its support and operations staff.

Since its inception in 2020, the company has completed over 100 projects across Southeast Asia and China and is looking to further expand within Southeast Asia and the UK by 2024.

“Our big plan for 2024 is to continue to grow our client base through the access of our new platform project automation while continuing to enhance and perfect our AI’s creative matching ability and add in more features supported by generative AI to make the experience even better for our clients,” Sandhu closes.

“Where constantly on the search for new creative markets, and the UK has a very experienced and world-renowned creative talent base. We’re hoping to tap into that expertise and creative ability and offer our clients higher quality and more cost-effective creative marketing solutions.”

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Image Credit: Independents

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