If you connect to anyone from the growing talent pool of 17,500 women on their experience with FlexiBees, you will find them giving a resounding feedback of ‘professional’, ‘supportive’, ‘genuine’, ‘motivating’ ‘blessing in disguise’ and more. And why not? The company has created 330+ meaningful, career-building roles so far, which means 330+ opportunities for women to work on their own terms, using the talent and skills they have spent their entire professional lives honing. They have also supported over 200 start up and small businesses including high-growth ones like Delhivery, Mettl, Creditmantri, Kristal.ai and some enterprises like Kimberly Clark, Mitsui, Wipro, Tata Realty, Economic Development Board of Singapore and more.
But what is FlexiBees? Three batchmates from IIM Bangalore, Deepa N Swamy, Rashmi Rammohan and Shreya Prakash founded the company in 2017 on the back of a personal story and struggle with wanting to get back to work after a break. They have a vision to re-employ qualified and experienced women professionals across all areas of expertise for whom a flexible working is a life choice and to support businesses looking for talent for short duration projects or long term resourcing. What makes the trio passionate about facilitating a flexible career for women and what makes them good at what they do? Samira Pillai gets into a conversation with one of the founders Shreya Prakash to find out how this three-year old bootstrapped venture is making flexible and remote working fashionable – with aplomb.
One of the mottos of FlexiBees is to change the way work is done; to make it more flexible. In hindsight, when you started out in 2017, do you believe that you were ahead of time?
That’s such a great question, took me a couple of moments to think. Actually we didn’t think we were ahead of time, in fact, we have had business from the very first day we went to market! And that’s because our offering is strongly rooted in solving a problem for our customers. Businesses, especially start-ups and SMBs, have a huge problem getting good talent that is affordable, and available as and when they need it. Hiring flexible ie. part-time, project-based and remote-working talent through agile on-demand models solve these problems. So, it was never like this is our vision and that’s why we want to sell part-time and remote talent to you. The customer problem and our vision are pretty well integrated.
What was the initial response to this non-traditional hiring model from companies? Were they some industries more open to the concept than others?
The initial response was very good. We started getting business as soon as we went to market. Start-ups and SMBs were the most receptive audiences, there was a very intuitive demand-supply fitment there. There were a few larger companies who were also waking up to the realization that a contingent workforce can be very beneficial for short duration projects, quick vacancy filling, managing seasonality, or even during times of hiring freezes, but they were fewer in number. Now after the pandemic that segment has also opened up more.
In terms of industries, we have worked for all kinds, from manufacturing, logistics to EdTech and AI. These models are pretty industry-agnostic. Everyone needs sales, marketing, content, etc.
There was 50% surge in hiring of part time talent post the onset of the COVID pandemic even among naysayers of flexible talent. What were your thoughts and feelings on this shift?
Yes there was a surge and demand is growing even more now. One of the key factors behind this surge is that companies want to hire more contractual talent, it helps them keep their team and cost structures low. Hence today we see many large and small businesses come to us for hiring contractual talent for full-time hours. Surprisingly, we also see the same shift in our talent pool, where increasingly more women are willing to work full-time and remotely. So we have started saying upfront that we can do full-time roles as well if they are fully remote.
The other shift is of course the mindset around remote working. The whole world has run an experiment on it during the pandemic, and there is much more confidence around it today. However, there is still some resistance to it in pockets, especially now that more people are going back to office, but it is very much in the consideration set. We have dialed up the usage of data and statistics around remote work in our conversations so businesses can make an informed decision.
The focus of FlexiBees is on qualified women who dropped out of the workforce and looking for a way back with flexible options. Please take us through your journey on how you came to choose this target audience and how the business model and systems have evolved over the last three years.
At the time of starting up, when we were discussing a few ideas, we were very sure we wanted to do something for women that helped them become more financially independent. It is in fact the personal story of my co-founder Deepa, that when she took a break for a couple of years, she found it hard to return: there were umpteen biases against returning moms, and there was no mindset of flexibility let alone flexible work opportunities. We realized this was a big gap area, where so many talented qualified women who want to work are unable to, because there is no concept of flexible working. We quickly started speaking with businesses and realized that what seemed like a disadvantage for this pool, their not being able to or not wanting to work full-time could be the biggest advantage for businesses who wanted to hire in a more agile and lean manner.
We still focus on the same things we had in our first year, just that we have got better at selling it :)
The target audience has slightly expanded to include not just women and mothers returning to work but also women who want to work flexibly out of choice, as a lifestyle that gives them freedom, variety and the chance to keep honing their skills continuously.
FlexiBees has three founders, each bringing a different skill set to the table. Please share with us some anecdotes, stories that highlights the dynamics between the 3 of you.
Yes, the three of us, Deepa, Rashmi and I are friends and batchmates from B-school. While we are very different and bring uniquely different skills, we work very well together. In fact we collaborate on many of the larger decisions, while one person might lead it, each of our unique perspectives are important and heard.
There is a lot of support, we have each had brief periods when we needed to take some time off and other two have been completely aligned and have enabled it. For example, I got pregnant and delivered my baby while being a FlexiBees founder. While I was working till the last day of my pregnancy, I did take two months off during delivery. Deepa and Rashmi managed it beautifully, and had I wanted to take more time off, we would together have figured out how.
Another interesting thing to note about us is that we are a remote co-founding team, with me being in Mumbai and Deepa and Rashmi in Singapore. This was from before when remote became fashionable. And it’s been great. We have done 2-3 hour long calls when we have big decisions to be made, we have done all-nighters across different homes when an important deliverable is to be turned in, we have celebrated all our milestones virtually. We have built a company that’s growing with a 38-member team and has big ambitions and plans, all remotely. Before the pandemic, we would meet occasionally, once in 3 to 6 months or so for important conferences or to brainstorm, but for the last year, all our ups and downs have been via ether, and it’s been good. I strongly think if people have the intent, geography doesn’t matter. This goes for co-founding teams and marriages, and the two are not so different :)
Your company walks the talk by having a blend of full-time and part time team members. What have been the key learnings and takeaways from this way of working and how did you apply them in practicum in your business?
We love hiring part-time professionals. It enables us to hire from our wonderful pool of returning women, who want to balance their professional and personal lives, as well as allows us as a business to keep ourselves lean. It also helps in women ramping up gradually, and taking on more hours when they feel ready. All of our full-time team members started out part-time, and as they found their feet, had support systems that could enable, and as the demands of the role increased too, they transitioned into full-time roles.
Since your business involves 2 different stakeholders – the talent and the organisation – and your business focuses on a non-traditional model of hiring and would require additional convincing – what are the different communication approaches you have found to be most effective with both stakeholders?
The talent pool comprises women who either by choice or because of a constraints are already hungry for work. So we focus on our differentiation like role match, professional interactions, and expectation setting around returnship being a journey that requires upskilling, and preparation.
On the business side, we focus on the benefits that our models and this talent pool brings. At the end of the day, a business needs to do well, and we talk about how we can help them grow in an agile way with great quality talent and affordable part-time, project-based and remote-working models.
What have you found to be the biggest challenges in terms of mindset with both stakeholders?
For the business side, it is the concept of remote working that still poses a challenge. We do have to do some convincing, especially for those businesses that are mid-sized, non-tech ones. We have a lot of data and examples from our own placements and we use those. We also speak of our own vetting process that ensures we are matching them to candidates who have the work ethic and tech savvy to work remotely. And finally, we design 1 month trial structures so that business can try more easily with the assurance that they don’t have to be locked into it for longer if it doesn’t work. We have converted quite a few skeptics who now are our biggest proponents and refer us to others in their network.
For the talent pool, most women when they reach out to us, are in the frame of mind where they want to make it work. They are eager and raring to go. Here we support further by providing an inclusive and respectful recruitment experience, and sharing of best practices upfront to enable them to start with their best foot forward.
One of the key differentiators on how FlexiBees works is its rigorous screening process and continued post-placement support for both the talent and the organisations. Please share with us some stories or anecdotes of the impact of your work.
Oh we have lots of stories. We have placed women with breaks ranging from 3-4 years to 7-8 years and more. Who have found career satisfaction, financial independence and rediscovered their self-identity through these. In fact, there is a short video that we recently made that I can share – Stepping into 21
On the business side too, there are many stories. Recently a client told us that the professional he hired for Sales was so good that she ended up training his internal team also. We have had contracts running with clients for 3 years now where the talent is like a member of their internal teams, and they also like the benefit of our model, so they continue to contract with us. There are others who choose to take the talent on their own payrolls after a while. The biggest endorsement is that many of our clients come back to us for repeat roles and 65% of our business comes from repeats.
With conversations raging around equal pay / opportunities, work-life balance, child care, period leaves, do you feel that there is extraordinary emphasis on supporting women on their journey into the workforce? Is it too little or too much or just right?
This was long due! Nearly everything in the workforce today has been designed for men, so a lot needs to be dismantled before it can start to look equitable. While a lot of these policies have come in and are getting talked about, they are usually concentrated around a few companies. A vast majority of businesses still consider anything done for women employees as a burden and an additional cost. Even in larger organizations while policies have come in, the people, line managers and peers still have biases. Working mothers are still looked at with some skepticism on whether they will be able to work as hard or deliver results, people are still uncomfortable around work from home.
There is a lot more that can be done. On a policy level too, to make it easier for fathers to participate in childcare that makes it more equitable for everyone on multiple levels. Governments along with mandating also need to provide incentives for organizations to put in place policies that get more women into the workforce.
The hope is that as more women are retained and return to the workforce through flexible working, equal parenting, better childcare, organizations will see the benefits increasingly more, and some of these biases will automatically melt away.
Is there enough conversation around making men more involved in work FOR home by enabling paternity leaves, flexible work options? Does FlexiBees see itself taking this up in the future?
There needs to be more conversation around it. We try in our own small ways, like during the pandemic we released a toolkit for our talent pool that spoke of dividing work among all family members. We see ourselves championing the cause of equal parenting and men working for home for sure, but for the foreseeable future, we will continue to create flexible opportunities only for women. Today more men are getting more involved in home and childcare and that is definitely a positive trend, but there aren’t enough of them. The last thing we want is that when it comes to choosing between a qualified woman who can work for 4-5 hours and a man, equal or less qualified, who can stretch to 7-8 hours, businesses choose the man. Nothing against men, obviously, and when more and more men start taking up care responsibilities, we would be happy to bat for them too.
Takeaways from the Interview

Are you looking for a flexible employment options that matches your skill? Head on to FlexiBees to find the meaningful opportunities across industries!