SquadRun: The startup that's helping the likes of Flipkart and Snapdeal become profitable

When you're in college, money is always tight. It doesn't matter whether you are enrolled at a community college or a fancy school, finding ways to make ends meet while you are trying to stay on top of your studies is a challenge. There’s a somewhat similar case with retired people and housemakers who want to earn that little extra to make things going. That’s where SquadRun comes in.

Founded by Kanika Jain, Apurv Agrawal, Vikas Gulati in 2014, Squadrun is a gamified mobile app that gives its users simple tasks to perform and earn for completing. For instance, categorising clothes in sections or removing the duplicates or just compare two products. You guessed it right! Their clients are eCommerce platforms like Flipkart and Snapdeal, who upload thousands of products every day.

The story behind...

“I started this company ‘NGO fuel’ back in 2009 or so. The idea was to create a distributed student volunteer network across India. On the other side, we were working with non-profits who needed help with content, social media, website development etc. Let’s say a NGO needs help with website development, college students who’re good with content skills, social media can throw in some help. We scaled really well and fast. And I think this idea of distributed workforce was an inspiration for SquadRun,” said Apurv.

What do they do?

It’s an enterprise SaaS (Software-as-a-service) platform that executes data intensive operations with a better cost, quality, speed & scale than existing alternatives. For example: catalog data enrichment, quality control, KYC/ merchant onboarding process etc.

In simple words, an ecommerce marketplace uses SquadRun for curation of content uploaded by sellers, moderation of user-generated product reviews, audit of their customer support conversations, and tagging products to improve search relevance. Their clientele includes Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal and Apurv claimed that almost 2/3rd of their customers are located outside India today.

Monetization Model

“We have a product which can replicate any of your workflows. Let’s say you’re an eCommerce platform and every time your server uploads a product they check a bunch of things like images, text inputs etc. Our system takes up the product inputs in real-time and then through our API (first filter) everything is checked. Then all of this data goes to people who further check the quality. Every business that works with us is charged according to the volume of data that needs to be structured. It’s more like a postpaid mobile plan,” told Kanika.

Funding

The company had raised an undisclosed amount from the startup founders of Zomato, Slideshare and other angels. When asked if they’re planning to raise, Apurv stated that the company is profitable and they’re not planning anything for now.