Blog

“I am not trying to make millions; I am trying to change the way millions think and learn.”  With this aim of educating millions, Byju Raveendran founded Byju’s, an edtech unicorn valued at $15 billion. From taking classes at his friend’s terrace to signing Shah Rukh Khan as its brand ambassador, Byju’s has come a long way. With the advent of technology and the rapid shift to online education, the company has emerged as an industry disruptor.

Let’s dive right in to find out how an engineer from a small town in India built Byju’s business model worth billions.

What Is Byju’s?

Byju’s is an edtech company providing an online tutoring platform to students. Precisely, Byju’s offers online education to the K-12 segment and the students preparing for various competitive exams. It has become one of the most popular education platforms with 3.5 million paid subscriptions and an 85% renewal rate.

The edtech unicorn stands out because it provides a holistic experience tailored to the needs of each student. Byju’s accomplishes this by providing technology-enabled and personalised journeys, trained teachers, and engaging content.

Byju Raveendran, the eponymous CEO of India’s first edtech unicorn Byju’s, was an engineer from a small town in Kerala, India. Byju scored 100 percentile in CAT (Common Admission Test for B-Schools admission in India) and was offered admission to India’s top management institutes. But instead, he started a coaching class for CAT aspirants, which spawned this money-making machine. He came a long way from teaching at his friend’s terrace to holding sessions in huge auditoriums.

“I believe when you take sessions in auditoriums, you’re creating a kind of fan following. You can’t do a math class in a stadium. It has to be a math performance.”

Finally in 2015, he launched Byju’s app which was a huge success.

Here is a brief history of Byju’s:

Who Are Byju’s Customers?

Byju’s has the unusual feature of never having the customer as its end-user. The parents serve as customers of Byju’s, but its actual consumers are the students who use the platform to study and learn. Hence its primary target audience is the parents who are willing to provide quality education to their children.

Byju’s currently offers its services to the K-12 segment as well as to the students preparing for JEE (engineering entrance), NEET (medical entrance exam), CAT (MBA entrance exam), and UPSC (civil services entrance exam). The company has a large user base with more than 75 million downloads across 1700 cities in India. 

What Is The Value Provided By Byju’s?

The education sector is a massive market with a lot of potential and room for expansion (India alone has 250 million students in the K-12 segment). The 2020 global pandemic accompanied by technological development accelerated the transition to online education. Amidst all this, Byju’s has emerged as one of the largest edtech companies.

Byju’s provides on-demand quality education through interactive animations. The company provides a platform where students can grow, learn and improve through fun and personalised activities. The reason for its rapid growth is its unique approach towards interactive learning and optimum utilisation of technology. The student can access all the resources provided by the company from the comfort of his home. The company not only provides engaging content but also seeks to monitor the student’s progress and hence tailor the experience for him.

Byju’s provides a holistic platform that caters to both the students’ needs and their parents’. The mentoring sessions, counselling sessions, and growth charts help the parents assist their child in his overall development.

In a nutshell, Byju’s incorporates the best of both online and offline, education.

Moreover, in 2020, Byju’s launched its ‘Education for All’ initiative. Through this benign initiative, the company aims at democratising education by educating at least 5 million children from underserved communities by 2025. The goal is to provide personalized learning to all children irrespective of their economic background.

How Does Byju’s Operate?

Byju’s provides courses for students in the K-12 segment and competitive exams like CAT, IAS, JEE, and NEET. The company offers a personalised journey for each student guiding them at every step.

Developers and teachers focus on making the content engaging, interactive, and fun to retain more students and make the courses interesting. In fact, this is what makes the company stand out. Today, the average time spent by a student on the app is 71 minutes per day.

Various activities offered by Byju’s are:

The life-like online classes offered by Byju’s help the students understand and grasp fundamental concepts with the help of animations and visual aids. Technology is used to make classes engaging and fun.

The tests, in-depth analysis, and personalised feedback from mentors help the students improve and strengthen their concepts. While tests are scary for most students, Byju’s makes them interesting and fun in the form of quizzes, bubble bursts, and word puzzles.

Byju’s also offers one-on-one monthly mentoring sessions where mentors interact with students and parents. These sessions aim to track and analyse the child’s growth and give some recommendations to improve the child’s performance.

The study videos are offered in various languages so that the students can learn at their convenience.

Byju’s also provides the students with comprehensive study material. The online classes, along with course material, make a perfect combination for great learning.

Byju’s also offers extensive programs for JEE and NEET preparation (engineering and medical entrance). It is a 5-days-a-week program where students are provided with video lessons, revisions, daily practice papers, study material, doubt solving sessions, performance analysis, and AITS (All India Test Series).

The company provides a comprehensive program to help aspirants crack the UPSC exam (civil services entrance). Students can avail the program through online classes, tablet mode, or offline classes. Students are offered one-on-one mentoring, doubt sessions, test series, fortnightly unit exams, interview preparation, and current daily affairs.

Byju’s is also popular among CAT aspirants. Its three-tier course structure consists of concept sessions, advanced sessions, and pattern sessions. The company brings forth a comprehensive and detailed program including mock tests, modules on GD-PI, and practice modules on essay writing.

Byju’s, in collaboration with Disney India, offers a separate app for students from LKG (lower kindergarten) to class 3. The app is specifically crafted for young children aged between 6-8 years featuring timeless Disney characters from Frozen, Cars, Toy Story, and Disney Princess.

Besides a great learning experience, Byju’s also provides free online counselling sessions to the students where they can get all their academic and career-related doubts cleared.

What Are Byju’s Key Resources?

Byju’s disrupted the market by combining tech with content. Hence, its content team, tech infrastructure, interactive graphics technology, customer relationship management infrastructure, and marketing team form key resources of Byju’s.

Who Are The Key Partners Of Byju’s?

Byju’s built its empire with the help of several content, financial, marketing, and payment partners.

Content Partners

Byju’s has partnered with Disney to develop its early learning program content targeted towards young kids. This partnership helps it develop content that’s more engaging and immersive.

Financial Partners

Byju’s has partnered with numerous organisations that have invested in the edtech unicorn. Some of the major organisations are:

• Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative- In 2016, Byju’s became the first-ever Asian company backed by CZI. The stellar debut made by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan paid them well as their investment is now worth at least 7 times more. 
• Sequoia Capital India- The venture capital firm invested a whopping $10 million in the company. According to G V Ravishankar, managing director of Sequoia Capital, “BYJU’S will be India’s Biggest Education Story.” According to Entrackr, the VC firm received 21 times its investment.
• Bond- also a venture capital firm, Bond infused $23 million in the unicorn. Byju’s became the first Indian startup backed by this first-female-founded VC firm.

Apart from this, the company is backed by multiple organisations, namely Silver Lake, Blackrock, Sands Capital Management, Alkeon Capital Management, Sofina, Verlinvest, Tencent, Nasper Ventures, CPPIB, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Qatar Investment Authority, Owl Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, Times Internet, Arin Capital and IFC.

Payment Partners

The company has partnered with several payment processors like Paytm, PayU, etc. to ensure hassle-free payments and subscriptions.

What Are The Key Channels Byju’s Use To Deliver Value?

There are three main channels through which Byju’s delivers its services to the students-

1. The Byju’s app, which is available for Android as well as iOS. The students can access all the premium features of the app like video lessons, quizzes, tests, games, etc. through a subscription
2. The tablet preloaded with all the chosen course video lessons helps the students learn even without an internet connection.
3. The company also offers offline classes in some cities of India.

How Does Byju’s Make Money?

Byju’s primarily operates on a subscription-based revenue model. A subscription model is the one wherein the customers have to pay a periodic subscription fee to access the platform.

Byju’s gives a 15-day free trial with some limited features. Once the consumer uses the services offered by Byju’s, he is compelled to purchase the course to access all the features offered by the company. This is how the company expands and promotes its product.

One can refer to Byju’s as the ‘netflix of education’ since both the companies have similar revenue models where they lure the customer and make them addicted to the platform.

Apart from subscription, Byju’s has some other sources of revenue:

• Offline Classes: Apart from the online classes available on its app, Byju also offers offline classes to cater to students who either cannot concentrate in an online class or require direct attention. The consumers need to pay for these offline classes.
  
• Tablet mode: The company also provides a tablet preloaded with all the study material and video lessons as required by the student. The tablet mode is more convenient for the students as they don’t need an internet connection to study. This helps them concentrate more without any distractions.
  

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think about our article on Byju’s business model in the comments section.

Whether you want to create a logo for your new brand, articulate your thoughts into an eloquent presentation, or make a lasting first impression with a professionally designed resume, Canva has got you covered.

Canva has become the go-to place for non-designers who want to visualise their thoughts and create a design without any prior skill-set. The tool is used by everyone willing to design, be it a social influencer, a company executive, or a high school student. It has a business model that allows the software to be used directly in the web browser, and it focuses on catering to its users’ needs whether or not they’re fluent with design knowledge.

But what makes Canva so unique? How does Canva make money?

Let’s find out!

What Is Canva?

Canva is a design  SAAS platform targeted towards non-designers helping them in developing digital and non-digital designs with ease. Unlike Adobe, the user doesn’t need a specific operating system or heavy machinery to use Canva. The platform can be easily accessed from a browser.

The platform has several features including various templates for presentations, social media posts, resume, brochures, invitations, certificates, newsletters, etc. The user interface of Canva includes a drag-and-drop editor that makes it extremely easy for the consumer to use the platform without any training. Furthermore, Canva allows users to print and publish their designs on various social media platforms without much hassle.

Canva was launched in 2013, but the company’s journey began in 2007 when Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht started fusion books – a web app to help students and teachers design their yearbooks. This web app later blossomed into Canva, which is valued at USD 15 billion as of April 2021. The company is seeing exponential growth in its user base, with over 30 million active users across 190 countries (as of June 2020). Also, around 80 designs are created using Canva per second!

Canva Business Model

Canva operates on a unique SAAS business model that uses a freemium revenue model to market, attract, and convert leads.

Who Are The Customers Of Canva?

Canva’s primary target audience includes people who aren’t professional graphic designers. Such people do not have the time to learn complex design software tools such as Adobe Suite or the money to hire a designer or a freelancer.

Today, the competition has made it imperative to have a good design if you have to stand out. Canva capitalised on this rising need with a business model that disrupted the design industry completely.

What Is The Value Provided By Canva?

Canva empowers the consumers to easily turn their ideas into beautiful visuals without much hassle or training. The ease of designing makes the consumers choose Canva over complex design tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator or Figma. If someone had to learn only the basics of design using Adobe, it would take a lot of time, energy and training. But, with the onset of Canva, designing has become easier than ever. Even a beginner can easily create a beautiful and professional visual within minutes. Canva provides some unique features to its consumers that make the process of designing quick and fun :

• The drag-and-drop user interface makes it incredibly effortless for the users to design and create on Canva.
• The visual aspects like different fonts, colours, frames and filters make the designs look professional.
• The variety of pre-designed and ready-to-use templates minimises a user’s workload and saves a lot of time.

Canva’s Operating Model

Canva provides value to its customers by allowing them to easily design and create even if they have no prior training or experience in the field. But how does Canva deliver value to its customers? Canva has a perfectly designed user interface that allows its users to: 

1. Customise different templates according to their needs.
   
2. Upload and insert various shapes, graphs, pictures, text, audio and videos using the drag-and-drop editor.
   
3. Save, print and publish their designs in different sizes and formats.
   
4. Create a Brand Kit that allows users to “set-and-forget colours, fonts and logos”.
   
5. Create a team that allows the users to collaborate and coordinate with the team members. In the free version of Canva, there can be up to 3000 members in a team and 20 teams in all.
   
6. Edit pictures using various filters and effects.
   

Canva’s Key Channels

 Canva is available for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. Since Canva is a SAAS platform, users don’t need to purchase the license or download the software in their systems. The platform is provided on their cloud as a service. This SAAS model allows the consumers to sync up multiple devices with Canva and work however and wherever they want.

Also, the users can download the app developed by Canva on their mobile phones. The application is available on Appstore as well as Playstore.

What Are The Key Resources Used By Canva?

The primary resources that allow Canva to deliver value to consumers are its designers who create various templates and designs and developers who develop and the platform’s technical features. These are the people who work behind the scenes so that the user can have an amazing experience while using Canva.

Who Are The Key Partners Of Canva?

The key partners of Canva enable and help the company to deliver value to its consumers. Canva has a range of partnerships across different industries. Because of these partners, the tech unicorn can provide excellent products and services to the consumers and increase its reach. In 2020, Canva’s US partnership network expanded as the company collaborated with more than 40 new ventures across 18 new countries.

So let’s take a look at the key partners of Canva:

1. Print Partners: Canva has several print partners including FedEx Office, OfficeDepot, Staples Canada, KiaKia, Kmart, TradePrint, and Zoomin. The print partners help Canva to print and deliver various products to the users. They achieve this by allowing the consumers to design their websites using Canva and then place the orders.
2. Digital Partners: The digital partners of Canva include HubSpot, Wattpad, PandaDoc, and Bukalapak. The digital partners help their consumers to design easily by imbibing Canva into their own platforms. This helps Canva increase its reach and popularity. The partners also benefit as they provide more value to their users by allowing them to design and create easily.
3. Pre-install partners: currently, Samsung is the pre-install partner of Canva. The pre-install partners promote the company by preloading Canva on their devices, be it android, iOS, PC, laptops or tablets. This way, whenever the consumer purchases such a device, they would be familiarised with the software and would be compelled to use it.
4. App Partners: Canva also offers an app development platform to developers by providing them with Canva API. The developers can use this to integrate third-party tools and to add even more features to Canva.

How Does Canva Make Money?

Canva operates on the freemium SAAS business model, where it provides the main product to the consumers for free. But to access certain add-on features that enhance the experience, the user needs to subscribe to premium plans. Canva offers three different pricing plans – the free plan, Canva Pro and Canva Enterprise.

• Canva Free: In its free version, Canva provides its users with 250000+ design templates, 100+ design types, thousands of free pictures and graphics and 5GB of cloud storage. The user can also create 20 teams in all with 3000 members. This plan is suitable for beginners and non-professionals who use Canva for their personal needs.
• Canva Pro: This plan is priced at $12.99 per month per user. This plan provides the user with some add-on features along with the basic features. These features include- 420000+ design templates, 75+ million premium stock photos, videos, audio and graphics, and 10GB of cloud storage. Canva also allows the pro users to create a ‘Brand Kit’ and upload their own fonts and logos. The pro plan is more suited towards professional designers or small teams who wish to collaborate and coordinate by working together. Canva also provides a 30-day free trial to its users in an attempt to lure them into buying the plan.
• Canva Enterprise: this plan is currently priced at $30 per month per user. This plan includes all the features of Canva pro, and it also allows the consumers to create and publish social media content directly from the Canva Editor to 7 different platforms. Besides this, a user can get approvals on their designs using the built-in workflows, control what team members can see, access, and upload in Canva, and unlimited storage. The consumers also have access to 24/7 enterprise-level support to help them with any problems they face. Canva provides a 30-day free trial for this plan as well.

One thing that sets the company apart from other freemium platforms is that Canva offers free subscriptions of Canva pro for non-profit organisations and special education programs for students and teachers.

Apart from the subscription plans, there are some other sources through which Canva makes money:

• Print Service: Canva also offers printing services to its consumers. The user can get his designs printed and delivered to his doorsteps with just a few clicks. Canva Print ships to more than 30 countries around the world. The price varies according to the kind of article and the country.

•  Design School: Canva’s design school is a series of courses covering all aspects of design, social media marketing and branding. The online courses are provided free of charge by Canva, and the physical courses start from as low as $5. These courses are primarily designed to make the user well-versed with various features of Canva and partly to promote the platform.

• Canva Marketplace: Canva also earns through a design marketplace where users can purchase designs for one-time use directly on Canva. These designs can be purchased by users who have not subscribed to the pro or enterprise plan. These designs are available for as low as $1. In return for providing a platform to the designers to list their designs, Canva charges a 35% commission for each design sold.

Thus, apart from a freemium model, Canva also works as an online marketplace.

What Makes Canva Unique?

Canva follows a straightforward approach and operates on a simple business model where it provides a platform where even those with minimal designing skills can visualise, design and create. The tech giant’s success can be attributed to its ability to attract and retain customers by providing them with an excellent experience.

Canva’s user base has increased to the extent that even if a small percentage of its users opt to purchase the paid plans, the company covers its operating costs and generates revenue. In 2020, when the world was trying to overcome the pandemic, Canva generated $500 million in annualised revenue.

The USP (Unique Selling Proposition), that makes Canva even more appealing to the consumers, is that it provides almost all of its services for free. The marketing strategies used by the company like the Canva Affiliate program, the free design courses or the 30-day free trial period work as add-ons and help the company grow and gain popularity.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think about our article on Canva business model in the comments section.

‘You are an imposter!’

A phrase that spread like wildfire just because a game was able to bring people together when the pandemic stopped them.

Developed by a very small three-member team of Innersloth and not having marketed much, Among Us is one of the few games that managed an astonishing meteoric rise in its popularity. It is a social deduction game which besides binge watching on Netflix and making Dalgona coffee (a short-lived trend of 2020), has garnered immense popularity and become the most downloaded mobile game in the unprecedented year 2020.

While the game was released in 2018, it did not witness such vogue much before mid-2020. Its success can be attributed to their simple, yet effective business model. Here is an overview of what the game is like before we delve into its business model!

What Is Among Us?

Among us is a space-themed murder-mystery game which was released by Innersloth on 15th June, 2018. Team work, mystery solving, and deception are the essence of this trending four to ten player game.

In its first year, the game had peaked at 1800 concurrent players, which was suffice to bring their servers down temporarily. It was only later that they climbed up Steam, iOS, and Google play store charts.

It was inspired by the game Mafia and the science fiction horror movie, The Thing,where people work in a team to lay hands on a ‘traitor’.

One of the primary reasons why the game’s popularity has skyrocketed is the abundance of streams of Among Us related content on the internet. The initial growth of Among Us was driven primarily by content creators in South Korea and Brazil. In July 2020, the game was made popular on twitch by the streamer Sodapoppin and little did anybody know, that the game will clock around 264 million downloads all around the globe by the end of the year. Akin to Zoom, it’s popularity skyrocketed majorly during the pandemic.

How Does Among Us Operate?

There are one to three randomly assigned imposter(s) in each round. The other players are crewmates who are assigned tasks like fixing wires, downloading data amongst many others which they are supposed to complete. The objective of the imposters is to blend in with the crewmates and pretend to do a fake list of tasks, while attempting to take any covert opportunities to kill the crewmates instantaneously. They can sabotage vital systems, travel through vents, and can team up with other imposters to help kill the crewmates. The maps can also be customised from a spaceship ‘Skeld’ to a headquarters building ‘MIRA HQ’, a panet base ‘Polus’ or the latest ‘Airship’ map.

Who Are Among Us Game’s Customers?

Unlike Candy Crush and other short spanned hyper casual games which last for barely two-three minutes, a typical game of Among Us lasts longer for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes. This makes the game immersive as people need to get engrossed in the game while interacting with their friends at the same time. Since Generation Z has the most spare time on their hands, they are the most suited audience.

What Value Does Among Us Provide?

People get to play and interact with not just their friends and known ones but also socialise with other unknown people they might come across on discord or other platforms while playing the game. Since four to ten people play the game, this initiates a chain reaction which eventually leads to a network effect. During the pandemic, it allowed people to socialise despite social-distancing. It also provides people with a good way to pass their time and compete with others. Moreover, the human element brings with it in-game strategies and an essence of psychological manipulation and ingenious deception.

Among Us Revenue Model

Despite being a free game, Among us has continued to make money because of its viable business model. The various sources of revenue include:

Revenue From PC Downloads

Although the mobile versions of the game are free, the PC version is available on Steam, which charges a one-time purchasing fee of $5. Although PC users constituted only 3% of their player base, the $5 upfront cost contributed to a large share of Innersloth’s revenue from August to November in 2020. Purchasing the PC version unlocks all the premium cosmetics which cost additionally in the mobile version.

Revenue From The Mobile Versions

The mobile version of the game is based on a freemium model. Therefore even though the game is free, the sources of revenue include:

Advertisements

Advertisements pop up on the player’s screens after each game finishes. Amongst many others, Among Us also uses Admob and other ad partners to monetise its user base. Advertisers pay them on a pay per click or number of viewers basis. The timers we see are set to ensure that the ad is displayed to the users for a certain appropriate time frame. Since there are millions of active users, it becomes easy for Among Us to generate substantial amounts of revenue.

In-App purchases

Among Us offers its users a choice to opt out of ads and customise their characters by purchasing pets, unique clothing and skin colours which are otherwise unavailable to mobile users. Players get automatic access to these costume customisations if they purchase the game via Steam. This also incentivizes the users to purchase the paid PC version. Moreover, the choice to opt out of ads provides a win-win situation for both the users and the company. 

Merchandise

Selling products like t-shirts and plushies designed with characters related to the game is another huge source of revenue for Innersloth. Owing to its immense popularity, the merchandise got sold out within a few weeks.

However, the 50 million dollars earned, do not all get to Innersloth. They have to incur various costs like that to the platforms the game can be found available on. Apart from paying the Google play store, the iOS play store, and steam, Innersloth also has to juggle with tax laws of different countries all over the world to pay taxes on the money they make.They also need to retain a significant amount of money after having paid the developers, for not just tax reasons but to have a pool of funds they can use for further development of the game.

The Future Of Among Us

The developers of Among Us focus on ‘games as a service’, a revenue model which allows them to monetise the game after its release. The model revolves around building mechanisms within the game to retain users as long as possible.

While the Among Us team has a very strong growth engine which would help them  continue to develop the game further and thrive on it, the team needs to come up with ideas for ensuring steady growth after the pandemic driven fuelcomes to an end. With the immense popularity that the game enjoys, plans to release the sequel have so far been cancelled. However, the team plans to update the existing version of the game and their servers, collaborate with new platforms for engaging their users and release Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game. They also plan to provide colourblind support, an entirely new stage and a new set of tasks. Moreover, they plan to introduce a ‘friend system’ which would help players create a social network within the game itself, and also report any hacking instances. Expansion of customer base while retention of the existing ones is very essential for their growth and a key to their success further. These additional features could drive the rapid growth of the game in the years beyond.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think about our article on Among Us Business Model in the comments section.

Edelman Intelligence, a global research and analytics consultancy firm, estimates that 90 million Americans will be freelancing by 2028. This enormous number reflects the huge market opportunity in the freelancing industry and a growing inclination of Americans towards generating income by offering independent professional services. Similar trends can be observed in countries like India, where digital services are pervasive.

But how can the global freelancing community make money in 2021 with the security of a sustainable business and expansive clientele?

Enters Fiverr.

Frequently rated as the best outsourcing website by multiple sources, Fiverr is a technological solution that connects businesses with freelancers.

So how does this innovative platform work? What is its business model, and how does it earn its revenue?

Let’s find out

What is Fiverr?

At its core, Fiverr is an online marketplace for professional freelancers to make their services available and accessible to businesses. It is where marketers, tech gurus, content strategists, and even artists like songwriters come together to post their offering as a Gig and connect with potential buyers without any unnecessary friction.

Founded in 2010 by Micha Kaufman and Shai Wininger, Fiverr has become a major player in the freelancing industry with offices in NYC, SF, Orlando, Phoenix, London, Berlin and headquarters in Tel Aviv.

In 2019, Fiverr went public and priced its IPO at $21 per share, raising around $111 million in a single day.

Fiverr Business Model

Fiverr follows a two-sided marketplace model in which it aggregates both freelancers (service providers) and businesses (service consumers) in a single platform to interact and conduct business.

Its services are centred around digital services that can be provided remotely and makes off its money through successful transactions made through the platform.

Who are Fiverr’s Customers?

Fiverr caters to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) or as they call “zero to enterprise” who are looking for professional freelancing services for their ongoing projects across verticals like graphic design, digital marketing, programming, video, animation and many more.

On Fiverr, those who avail or buy services are called ‘Buyers’ while those who sell (freelancers) are termed as ‘Sellers’. Although Fiverr’s primary target market constitutes buyers, in recent years, the company has made several acquisitions to add additional products to businesses for content marketing and business promotion.

What Values Does Fiverr Deliver?

For Buyers

Fiverr aggregates a diverse pool of freelancing professionals for buyers or businesses so they can find the right candidate for their projects or digital assignments on a single trusted platform. This gigantic talent aggregator delivers a host of values to its Buyers to set them apart from online marketplaces for freelancers, some of which are mentioned below:

Save Time and Effort

With scores of digital services available on a single platform, buyers save both time and effort in gig discovery for their projects. They can further streamline their search by adding multiple filters on Fiverr’s sophisticated browsing tool to get the relevant results without any hassle.

Transparency in Services

Buyers can view and find all the relevant information regarding every service or gig posted on Fiverr. There is transparency in the pricing and deliverables along with the freelancer’s profile, including average response time, last delivery, ratings, and skills, so that any buyer can decide with certainty if the candidate meets the specific job criteria or not, which optimises the entire talent-search process.

Access to a Diverse Catalog of Digital Services

With Fiverr, buyers can find digital services in over five hundred categories and eight verticals, including Graphic & Design, Digital Marketing, Writing & Translation, Video & Animation, Music & Audio, Programming & Tech, Data and Business.

Conflict Resolution

A buyer who does not get the desired product or service can ask for revisions if it is included within the package. Moreover, buyers can even contact Fiverr’s Resolution Centre in case of a conflict or poor service to resolve the matter.

For Sellers

Sellers or freelancers are the backbone of Fiverr since they represent the user category that provides actual services to buyers. Hence, to keep them using Fiverr, the company offers them scores of services and products, which are listed below:

No Negotiations and Bidding on Projects

Fiverr search algorithms match and connect buyers and sellers without having the sellers compete for their services among the competing freelancers. Sellers just need to create an appropriate business profile, add their gigs and packages, and take a backseat while Fiverr finds the most appropriate buyers for them.

Clear Scope of Project

Sellers get to learn first-hand what an interested buyer expects from them, including project description, specific instructions, relevant files, and even budget. This enables communication between the participating parties and lets the seller develop a product that will satisfy a customer.

E-Learning Products

Sellers can also learn on-demand professional skills by enrolling in both business and technical courses. These courses are led by experts in their niches and primarily target freelancers to achieve skills that businesses demand for their projects.

Fiverr Operating Model

Fiver operates on a two-sided marketplace model that stands tall on the network effect developed by the network of buyers and sellers.

What are Fiverr’s Key Offerings?

Online Marketplace for Freelancers

Fiverr’s most significant offering is its core online marketplace that connects businesses with freelancers.

The following steps break down how Fiverr’s core marketplace works:

• First off, a buyer browses through a catalogue of gigs available within a category or a sub-category by typing the right keywords and applying the relevant filters like budget, delivery time, etc.
• Next, they select a gig by assessing the work scope of the seller, and choosing the right package (Basic, Standard, or Premium).
  
• Buyers can also issue a gig request that sellers can respond if they believe they have the right skills for the gig.
  
• After the buyer orders and pays for the gig along with a 5% service fee, they then send the specific instruction, descriptions, and files for the seller to work on. Both parties can communicate throughout the entirety of the gig.
• Finally, once the project is completed and delivered and the buyer has not raised any issue for 14 days, Fiverr “makes 80% of the transaction value available for seller to withdraw”

Learn From Fiverr

Learn From Fiverr is the company’s e-learning platform that aggregates professional courses led by experts. Upon successful completion, a user earns a credential or a badge on their profile that signifies their expertise in the skill.

Any user can browse through catalogues of courses and enrol in a course for unlimited access. Fiverr guarantees 30-day money back if the enrollee is not satisfied with the course.

Fiverr Elevate

Fiverr Elevate provides resources to freelancers to establish their businesses. It is structured in the form of a short video series to learn the essentials of freelancing and then get exclusive deals on services like bank accounting and taxes from partner companies.

Who are Fiverr’s Key Partners?

Sellers

Fiverr is nothing without the freelancers that sell their offerings on the platform. These freelancers, even though, are treated as customers, form the key partners of Fiverr. They are the backbone of the platform that makes this outsourcing website a truly outsourcing website.

Affiliates

Fiverr has its own Affiliate program where it pays affiliates up to $1000 for promoting Fiverr and its products to their target audience. Affiliates constitute Fiverr’s key marketing partners.

Fiverr Elevate Partners

They comprise a select group of partner companies that offer their professional services through Fiverr Elevate.

Payment Processors

Fiverr’s payment partners include PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Wire Transfer, and many more.

Which Channels Does Fiverr Use To Deliver Value To Its Customers?

Fiverr has its own website and is available as an application on Android and iOS devices. Both sellers and buyers can log in to Fiverr and access the pool of their customers through a single integrated platform. Additionally, users can also avail of additional products like Fiverr Learn and Fiverr Elevate on Fiverr’s affiliated websites.

How Does Fiverr Maintain Its Relationship With Its Customers?

Being an online marketplace for businesses and freelancers alike, Fiverr provides the necessary resources and means to a user to help themselves (Self-service) and convert customers. At the same time, the company has its community forum and is known to organise several virtual events and provide guides for business growth to its users, which showcases that Fiverr strives to develop a more personal relationship with its community.

How Does Fiverr Make Money?

Fiverr’s primary source of income is the money it charges its sellers for every transaction made through the platform. To be precise, it charges a flat 20% fee to the seller as a commission for enabling transactions with the buyer.

Fiverr also earns money by offering professional courses on its native platform Learn From Fiverr.

Besides this, the platform also earns revenue in the form of affiliate income by offering deals to business services offered by Fiverr Elevate Partners.

Over the years, Fiverr has made several acquisitions of companies like ClearVoice (a subscription-based content marketing platform), And Co, SLT Consulting and more to expand its services and products to its target audience – freelancers and businesses. These added products are now branded under Fiverr and act as the company’s another stream of revenue.

Final Thoughts

In December 2020, Fiverr released a press release in which it reported that 68% of Remote Workers are Interested in Taking on Freelance Work Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic.

While it’s true that the pandemic directly resulted in a global economic downturn and huge job losses, but with the rise of remote work, reduction in the commute time and a general shift in the mindset of those working remotely, the freelancing industry has prospered.

And taking advantage of this huge opportunity is Fiverr. So much so that in its Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 results, the company reported that “Revenue in 2020 was $189.5 million, an increase of 77% year over year”.

In fact, in a statement, Micha Kaufman, founder and CEO of Fiverr said “in the year ahead, we also expect to continue to roll out significant products, features and capabilities and continue to help lead and power the global trend towards digital transformation and remote work”. Clearly, Fiverr is pulling out all the stops to become the most successful enterprise in the freelancing industry.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something?  Come on! Tell us what you think of this article on Fiverr business model in the comments section.

At a time when more than half the world’s population finds itself on the internet, companies have turned the privacy of individuals into commodities. They use this gathered data to personalise advertisements for each potential customer. Today, more and more individuals are growing conscious of the kind of data they share on the internet and even on private messaging platforms.

A widely used messaging application, WhatsApp, is now the source of privacy concerns. Individual users are increasingly growing sceptical about how private their conversations remain on the application. This issue had led to users shifting to other end-to-end encrypted messaging applications. One such messaging application which is fast gaining popularity among users is Signal.

What is Signal? Who uses it, and what are the values that it stands by? What’s Signal business model and how does Signal earn its revenue?

Let’s find out!

What is Signal?

Signal is an encrypted messaging application that allows users to send messages and also make calls.

Signal’s USP, however, is its guaranteed focus on privacy protection. Since it is open-source and peer-reviewed, individual experts can check on its privacy and security. It encrypts text messages, calls, including group calls, and even gif searches.

The design of the application is such that a user’s privacy is highly prioritised. We see this in several ways – an example could be that of its video call feature. When the person answers a video call on the other end of the call, the user has to turn on their camera, as it doesn’t automatically turn on as it does on other messaging applications.

Growth of Signal

The messaging service has been around since 2014. However, it became more widely used only after 2018. The formation of the Signal Technology Foundation was announced in early 2018, the founders being Moxie Marlinspike and the co-founder of WhatsApp, Brian Acton, in California, USA. This foundation aimed at making private messaging more accessible and ubiquitous to users, as stated in their announcement post.

The messaging application was then popularised during the George Floyd protests, the reason being increased awareness regarding matters concerning the police monitoring individual data. During that period, the app also introduced a new feature wherein users could then blur faces to ensure heightened privacy to secure users from the federal’s increased monitoring. As a result of increased awareness relating to privacy, the app saw a sharp increase in downloads.

Early in January 2021, Signal again witnessed a spike in the number of new user registrations. Sources linked this to the change in WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy. It led to Elon Musk’s two-word endorsement of Signal – “Use Signal”. 

Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee known for leaking highly classified information from the NSA, also posted a tweet vouching for Signal. He himself has been a supporter and user of the application since 2015.

The response to all of these events was so overwhelming that the volume of new users caused the app’s servers to crash on January 15, 2021.

As a result of these events, the world witnessed a massive digital migration from a messaging application that threatened privacy to a more secure messaging application.

Who Is Signal’s Customer?

As of January 2021, Signal has been downloaded by users worldwide more than 105 million times. The messaging application now has around 40 million monthly active users.

The digital migration to signal mainly consisted of users who are aware and dubious of the change of WhatsApp’s privacy policy. Millions of users changed and encouraged others to change their primary messaging app.

The application is popular among Generation Z – a generation that cares most about its privacy. This generation is also quick when it comes to learning and adapting to new technological platforms, and hence, opted to make the big digital shift. While journalists and those belonging to other such occupations which require heightened privacy also form Signal’s target audience, Signal’s users primarily constitute those belonging to the newer generations.

What Value Does Signal Provides To Its Customers?

Signal is to WhatsApp as Snapchat is to Instagram. Snapchat is a privacy centric social media platform where users conduct more private interactions with those considered close. Instagram on the other hand lets users interact with a broader audience consisting of family, friends and followers.

Similarly, Signal users mainly use the application to have more private conversations with people who matter, while WhatsApp is used for conversations that the user does not necessarily consider private. These even include conversations with businesses.

Signal’s popularity rose as a result of concerns regarding WhatsApp’s changed privacy policy. WhatsApp’s privacy update made users think that their private messages would now be accessible to a third party which would then be shared to Facebook, the parent company of WhatsApp.

This threat to their privacy caused millions of users to shift to Signal. Mainly, users who believed that absolutely nobody should have access to their chats migrated to the much more secure messaging service.

Signal promised its users that it would never sell its users’ data, and since it is a non-profit, it would also not be showing any advertisements to earn revenue. This even positioned it differently from another privacy centric application – Telegram.

Moreover, Signal is an open-sourced and peer-reviewed IM; its code, clients, and protocol are publicly available, and the world helps improve the application’s security and functioning rather than just one company.

The application is easy to use and requires no specialised knowledge, making it widely accessible to users globally.

Below listed are some features that Signal allows to its users for enhanced conversational privacy:

• Disappearing messages: Signal allows its users to keep their messages for a specific amount of time before being deleted permanently. This time can span anywhere between five seconds to a week. After the selected amount of time, viewed messages would be automatically deleted.
• View-once only media: This feature, accessible to those using Signal on their mobile phones, allows users to share images and videos that would be removed from a conversation once it has been viewed. It enables the user on the other end to view the image only once.
• Local-backups: Media and other data shared on Signal is stored locally, which means third parties would not have access to all the data that users have shared.
• Registration lock: The application requires its users to set a PIN when registering. This feature prevents a second device from being added to the account and stealing the information without the user’s knowledge.
• Incognito Keyboard: The application also prevents the keyboard from sending user-typed data to a third party, preventing sensitive data from being leaked.

Signal’s Operating Model

Signal is an instant messaging service application that can be installed on Android and Apple smartphones as well as on desktops. The app allows the following features to its users:

• Secure messaging with end-to-end encryption: Signal combines end-to-end encryption with its open source model, guaranteeing public that it is performing end-to-end encryption securely.
  
• Secure voice and video calls with end-to-end encryption: Just like text messages, the video and audio calls on Signal are end-to-end encrypted and can only be accessed by the parties involved.
  
• Group chats: Users can create group chats. Additionally, invitees are first asked whether they would like to be added to the group, unlike WhatsApp, where anyone with your contact number can directly add you to a group without prior permission.
  
• Disappearing text messages: Allows users to set a specific time limit until a text message is visible to the receiver. These viewed messages get automatically deleted after a set amount of time spanning 5 seconds to a week.
  
• View-once only media: Allows users to send videos and images that can be viewed by the receiver only once.
  
• Signal PIN: The Signal PIN can help users recover their profile, settings, contact and blocklist if they ever happen to lost or switch their device.
  
• Payments: Just like Whatsapp, Signal also allows its users to send and receive payments through the instant messaging application. However, what sets this IM apart is that users transact cryptocurrencies and not fiat. This feature reinforces the company’s goal to keep your data in your hands rather than the company’s.
  

Signal’s Revenue Model

Signal is a non-profit organisation – it does not aim to earn profits.

It relies solely on donations to continue functioning. It accepts all currencies and even cryptocurrencies as donations.

Since Signal’s program is known to be open-sourced or publicly available, independent developers are welcome to offer patches and solutions, which saves the organisation a lot of money.

As a result of disagreements regarding the monetising of WhatsApp by the means of advertisements and an altered privacy policy, both founders of WhatsApp resigned from Facebook. Brian Acton, one of the co- founders of WhatsApp, who went on to become the executive chairman of Signal as well as its co-founder, invested $50 million into Signal in 2018. Thus, through donations and investments like these, Signal continues to operate smoothly.

Future of Signal

Signal seems to have a promising future. With its progressive privacy- preserving objective, the app could see more privacy-conscious users in the future.

Signal has promised to not be yet another sellout. The team states that they have taken all possible measures to not disappoint its users in the future. Firstly, they do not have access to any user data. Secondly, the project, Signal, has been structured as a non-profit, which means it can never be owned or bought by anyone. Additionally, their motive evidently is not and never has been profit-making, and Signal has been a project that has aimed towards something other than profit.

From all the gathered points, it is quite evident that Signal would continue to prioritise privacy and security above everything else, and this objective will only draw in more users in the future.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something?  Come on! Tell us what you think of this article on how does Signal make money in the comments section.