The Writers Community founded by Ankit Dev Arpan and Shanya Das - A freelancer’s sanctuary

Since the start of the previous year, the world has gone through an earth-shattering change following the outbreak of COVID-19 throughout the globe. Every sector of the Indian economy has been dramatically affected due to the extended lockdowns employed to curb the spread of the deadly pandemic.

Many small and large businesses have been forced into bankruptcy due to the absence of patrons, which has, in turn, led to mass unemployment for people belonging to the lower-income and middle-income brackets. However, this has ignited the passion amongst many to turn to personal startups as a source of income and a possible career. Still, due to the pandemic, traditional forms of employment have seen a sharp drop.

This phenomenon is doubly true for startups whose financial situation can be considered shaky, at best, as they grope for possible sources of revenue. As a result, tens of thousands of such people whose livelihoods have been threatened have turned to "freelancing" - the practice of self-employment. Freelancers have quickly become preferred employees for employers who can not yet afford to pay a fixed salary.

Thus, freelancing has allowed those who had been unemployed due to the pandemic to maintain their livelihoods. However, the field of freelancing is not all roses and sunshine, as many freelancers have become victims of unscrupulous employers who have refused payment to their employees despite receiving their work. As a result, freelancing as a profession has become mired in disrepute. However, as if to pioneer the end of the prejudice against freelancing, Ankit Dev Arpan and Shanya Das, alumni of Navodaya Vidyalaya and two brilliant youngsters from the state of Bihar, began a startup named The Writers Community.

This trustworthy freelance marketplace creates opportunities for employment and skill enhancement for freelancers through the use of a "Universal Sample System," which allows freelancers to use just one sample to obtain projects from a variety of clients. This practice significantly reduces the effort on the part of the freelancer as they no longer have to spend their own time and effort creating a new sample for every client, something for which they aren't paid.

According to Ankit Dev Arpan, The Writers Community has made it its focus to provide virtual support in the form of public relations services for the public and the private sector. After all, freelancing and working from home are economical, especially for small businesses and startups. It would allow them to save a significant amount of expenses that would otherwise go towards infrastructure costs for housing the employees, among other things. This initiative would allow these businesses to stay afloat long enough to find their unique profit model.

In addition, to further aid such promising startups, The Writers Community can handle the different technical departments virtually. These include the academic, the administrative, the financial, the human resources, and content creation departments whose work can be replaced by qualified freelancers. This practice would further allow the startups to save the costs of hiring and housing the many employees which are traditionally required for the functioning of these departments.

In addition, the expenditure on the salary of these in-house employees would also be retained by the startups.

Meanwhile, the Co-founder of The Writers Community, Shanya Das, said that working from home would also positively affect the environment. Not to mention the vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions caused due to the use of personal vehicles used daily by the hundreds of thousands of employees to reach their workplace, the construction of commercial buildings on agricultural and residential lands for housing office employees also adversely affects our environment.

In addition, the shift of the mode of employment from offline to online would also make it highly comfortable for the employees, especially for those who have to commute from far. Moreover, female employees, older employees, and disabled employees would also find the online mode of employment preferable. Co-founder Shanya Das added that the safety of female employees is an especially sensitive and important issue that would be ensured by work from home freelancing, especially in metropolises such as Delhi NCR.

Despite the avant-garde nature of freelancing and working from home, over the past year, it has become clear that it has become a need for the times and "the new normal," and the free market enterprise will certainly eliminate anyone who lacks virtual capabilities.

Founder of the Writers Community Ankit Dev Arpan is from Bihar and he is alumni of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Samastipur. He is an author and Public speaker too. His couple of books are published also he is working with several news portals. He is currently pursuing Law from IMS College, Noida. Also, the co-founder of the Writers Community, Shanya Das is from Bihar and alumni of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Araria. She is also a writer and authored a book. She is currently pursuing Graduation in Hindi from Gargi college.

These both are trying to make some changes in freelance sector and making all possible efforts with The Writers Community team.