Unlike tens of tech-enabled job search engines for the corporate sector, the creative art space is yet to witness a similar platform for hiring artists.
With his vast experience in this industry, Yatish Jain wanted to bridge this gap. This is when the idea of TalentDirectory germinated in his mind. Yatish’s idea was to make hiring creative talent as easy as booking a cab and shopping for grocery online through web and mobile. He then spent some time researching about the market viability and finally launched TalentDirectory in September 2016.
Yatish had previously started a modeling agency during the dot com boom which was then commercialised in 2013. Along with this he’s also a Fashion photographer and has an experience in the Events industry closely.
TalentDirectory can certainly be called as a search and discovery platform which acts as a bridge between the talents and customers. It helps people to book an artist for any event at one place without having to go through the hassle of searching multiple sources.
“When someone wants to throw a birthday party for their child on a tight budget, they don’t want to go to an event planner but rather directly try to reach out a Magician, Joker, Tattoo Artist, Emcee, etc, Getting contact details of these people is rather difficult. Most of the times they end up calling an event manager whose quotes are out of the budget. This is where TalentDirectory comes to the picture. We are eliminating middlemen in hiring talents”, says Yatish.
Likewise, the platform also helps talents to find jobs easily. For an instance, if a model has registered on TalentDirectiry, he/she automatically receives an email notification each time a casting call in their area is published. It keeps the artists up to date on opportunities and alerts them to last minute jobs.
TalentDirectory aggregates artists across categories, like actors, models, singers, photographers, designers, musicians etc. It claims to have more than 3,500 artists registered on the platform and aims to reach the mark to 1 million in next 21 months.
Yatish has cracked down one of the major problems most startups face i.e. revenue generation. TalentDirectory has a variety of revenue streams. It follows a Freemium model for the membership subscription. Apart from this, it does movie and event promotions on the platform. Ads also contribute a significant amount to TalentDirectory’s revenue.
TalentDirectory does face stiff competition from many online and offline competitors. But, they have tried to carve out an identity of their own in the talent hiring space. Instead of being a simple marketplace like its competitors, the startup makes use of technology to solve the problem more efficiently.
