Freelancer arena Elance today launched operations in Israel. Operations serve registered freelancers working in IT services and programming, marketing, creative, mobile, accounting, legal, and other fields.
The arena enables businesses to hire online freelancers at hourly rates or by project, while offering freelancers direct access to customers. The arena has 1.8 million registered freelancers and 179,000 clients in 180 countries.
Elance says that it will adapt its product for its Israeli users, including local payment options and translation of relevant parts of the platform to Hebrew, if there is demand. The company will operate in Israel through a team of local representatives, which will increase awareness of online work and train local businesses and freelancers in creating success working online.
Elance forecasts that, by 2013, Israeli companies and start-ups will offer 12,000-15,000 jobs, and that these companies will employ 9,000 freelancers from all over the world. Currently 17,800 jobs are being offered in Israel, mostly for computer and creative services. The total value of these jobs is $14.8 million.
Elance VP Europe Kjetil Olsen said, "Elance’s success worldwide demonstrates that businesses now have the potential to work in a truly globalized way. No doubt that Israel is a phenomenon when it comes to talents, creativity and out of the box thinking. We’re confident that this rollout will leverage both the opportunities and level of support to our Israeli clients and contractors. With global economies experiencing severe difficulties, we believe the Elance model of empowering online workers and businesses to operate in new ways is more relevant than ever."
Elance's clients include giants Cisco Systems Facebook, Microsoft, and Oracle. The company expects that the online work will account for 10% of the total market by 2020.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 17, 2012
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