Siddhanth Ganesan

ID: sganesan7

03/31/2015

Samasource: Give Work, Not Aid

Founded in October 2008, Samasource was a non-profit that secured contracts for digital
services from large companies in USA and Europe, divided the work into small pieces and sent it
to delivery centers in developing countries for completion through a web-based interface. The
company targeted three categories of work relating to digital data: content generation, data
enrichment, transcription services.
The typical partner delivery centers Samasource selected were located in developing
locations and were entrepreneurs with a social mission. They employed marginalized workers
and had ethical labor and environmental practices. Samasource engaged in some recruitment for
partners and received many requests. After joining Samasource, the partner would receive
training on Samasources proprietary tech platform and then be given small jobs to learn the
work, illustrate responsiveness and build communication ties. Samasource invested time and
effort into development and training at its partner centers. In order to standardize operations,
Samasource launched Samalab, a test center for new processes, new approaches to recruiting
and new payment methods.
Samasource was founded on the belief the people from all backgrounds were equal and
could do the same work, given training. Samasource worked to change the perspectives of the
workers who did not believe themselves capable, help them understand work culture. The
workers were also trained on how to complete assigned tasks. The delivery staff kept track of the
kind of work each center was best at. The Samahub platform evaluated the tasks. In a question
with limited number of choices the Samahub was a unified, distributed microwork platform which
would compare the output of multiple workers who completed the same work. If it matched the
output was likely correct. If not the work was completed again and compared. It would also
evaluate worker performance. It gave Samasource a competitive advantage. The nature of
Samasources business seemed appealing to media outlets, featuring in television and print
media. This increased the sales Samasource received. Early pilots had been too large, the fast
ramp up needed overwhelmed the workers. However, since customer prices were based on the
flat part of the customers learning curve, Samasource needed to ensure that the initiative did
not ramp up too slowly. The Delivery team took work from the sales team and prepared it for the
Samahub so it could send work to the delivery centers. The delivery team interacted with the
technology team on platform structure and strategic decisions. The delivery team trained the
delivery center managers and workers and worked with sales to cost out the model. They also
helped development explain how samasource worked. The team had 3 project managers, a QA
and training manager and a QA team in India.
The challenges faced by Samasource included stiff competition from existing large BPO
players and newer crowdsourcing firms. A number of firms were competing with Samasource in
the BPO marketplace. Firms in India and Philippines could leverage the growing pool of college
graduates with English skills in urban areas to compete effectively in Industry. A large number of
firms were starting to operate in developing regions for three reasons: Costs were beginning to
rise in traditional BPO destinations and customers and existing players began searching for new
locations, lack of alternate employment meant that turnover was lower, government and social
enterprise initiatives encouraged companies in these locations. Samasources corporate coffers
did not match those of its venture capital-backed, for-profit competitors. Another challenge
Samasource faced as a non-profit was the difficulty of recruiting sales personnel. The

Siddhanth Ganesan

ID: sganesan7

03/31/2015

development team was also facing troubles with obtaining funding for the company. On one side,
few philanthropic donors understood the companys social business perspective and hesitated to
fund Samasource. On the other hand, traditional investors saw no opportunity for a dollar return
on their investment.
Despite these challenges, Samasource experienced 400% growth from 2009 2010 with a
tenfold increase in revenue. In the long term, donors would not be essential to the business as
earned income would fund operations. However, in the short run, donors would continue to be a
large role in accomplishing Samasources mission of building a sustainable, healthy, scalable
enterprises company.