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  • January 2020
  • Case
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Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language

By: Ashley V. Whillans, Esel Çekin and Alpana Thapar
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:22
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Abstract

Jordanian entrepreneur, Nour Al Hassan, founded Tarjama in 2008, tapping into an underserved and high demand need: Arabic translation service. Its lean model comprised of hiring full-time employees, mainly women, who worked from home. It steadily grew over the following decade to become a three-office, 140-employee company. In January 2017, Al Hassan launched a second business, Ureed.com, which encompassed a scalable, competitively priced online model. It was a linguistics marketplace, bringing companies and freelancers together. By October 2018, Ureed.com had significantly grown, having over 14,000 freelancers using the platform. As Al Hassan looked ahead at the ambitious growth plan they had in place, which included geographic expansion, diversifying the language offering, and monetizing Ureed.com’s proprietary training and language tools, the main challenge she foresaw was maintaining the quality of the work performed by the freelancers while ensuring they remained motivated and loyal to the platform.
Was the company ready for this growth plan or was it too ambitious for a company relying almost exclusively on freelancers? Would the training tools and technology add-ons suffice to sustain quality levels as the number of clients and freelancers grew? How could Al Hassan continue to create loyalty with an ever-growing number of freelancers? What were the other imminent challenges of adding new offices and languages simultaneously with only a small team of full-time employees?

Keywords

Language Translation; Freelancers; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Management; Expansion; Quality; Growth and Development Strategy

Citation

Whillans, Ashley V., Esel Çekin, and Alpana Thapar. "Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language." Harvard Business School Case 920-038, January 2020.
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About The Author

Ashley V. Whillans

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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Related Work

    • January 2021 (Revised March 2022)
    • Faculty Research

    Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language

    By: Ashley V. Whillans
Related Work
  • Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language By: Ashley V. Whillans
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