Singapore-based Referoll Rebrands as UserScout, Makes it Easier to Scout for Research Participants

Referoll, a platform that recruits and rewards research participants, has announced that it will go through a change in both name and business model. The Singapore-based startup is now known as UserScout, which will give the startup “a fresh start”, says CEO Ariff Munshi, and a chance “to reflect the business better”. The company had received feedback that the previous name was difficult to pronounce and spelling was an issue.

Unlike in the past where the platform served as a recruitment service and the team would hunt down participants for market research companies, the service has now evolved where it is a full software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform where anyone is able to post market research projects and manage participants on his or her own. With the new UserScout platform, using the service becomes a breeze. Ariff likens this to an “EventBrite for user research projects”. He elaborates:

What we offer are the tools to help them out with the recruitment process and a page where people can sign up for the projects. We are also now a platform where participants can easily search and be matched to the projects. Thus we’ve changed the business model from a recruitment fee to a subscription model for using the tool.

The Singapore-based startup also allows sharing to social media platforms, which widens the network of both local and international research participants. With its tools available, it will help support academic, medical, and market researchers to effectively screen, schedule, and pay participants all on one platform.

During UserScout’s pre-launch beta stage, it had 35 user researchers from countries such as Singapore, India, United Kingdom, and the United States to test the site. At present, 10 user researches have created projects to do their recruitment. From the last time we communicated with Ariff, he tells us that 16 projects have already been posted with 20 user participants successfully recruited.

Ariff expects the number of research participants to grow once it pushes out its referral scheme. It currently has 300 user participants on board from its pre-launch beta, which excludes the 1,600 user participants it has previously acquired on the Referoll platform.

UserScout aims to fill the gap in finding the right participants for market research studies. Ariff adds:

Tools such as SurveyMonkey, UserTesting.com, and Loop11 have seen rapid adoption over past couple of years but they are no good unless you have the right people in your study.

[With UserScout,] researchers can focus on the study and the insights it yields instead of getting bogged down by tedious detective and admin work.

UserScout will also be one of the seven startups pitching at JFDI.Asia demo day which will take place on June 3. It is currently looking for seed investments to accelerate its expansion efforts.