Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is one of the most successful industries in the Philippines, and has traditionally been dominated by large companies running massive brick-and-mortar facilities.
Entrepreneurs Vince Loremia and Mark Lapuz have created the startup Kallfly to revolutionize this system and pierce the market. Kallfly is a cloud-based call center solution embracing a business model that does away with the need for a physical facility, and allows employees to work at home. The job only requires a computer, headset and decent Internet connection, technology which is not hard to come by in the country.
One of the company’s main selling points is the speed and efficiency with which it can set up a contact center service for a client. Instead of constructing solutions specific to a given business, Kallfly merely links the client with the number of workers it needs from a pool of experienced, home-based freelancers. Obviously this is not ideal for large companies, especially in early stages of the startup, so Kallfly has said that they are focused on small and mid-sized businesses.
The underlying technology is another strength: Kallfly runs on Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) and WebRTC. Lapuz is enthusiastic, saying, “We can bring the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and Telephony to a new level of experience.”
As is the case with any newcomer, the startup has experienced some challenges breaking into the market. However, with the assistance of Asian business accelerator, Joyful Frog Digital Incubator’s (JFDI) 100-day investment program, Kallfly is already enjoying mild success. The company now employs 510 freelancers that work for nine clients, and the founders are happy to say there are potentially at least 25 more.
All of these developments occurred within only a few weeks – with that in mind it is hard to predict what will happen in the next few. Kallfly, benefiting from the competitive aspirations of its founders, will likely prove to be a major player in the mass transition of call center agents from dedicated facilities to work-at-home environments.
Edited by Adam Brandt