01 / The client
Project overview: Milestone101
Milestone101 connects professional portfolios, casting calls, recruiter search and talent management in a two-sided marketplace.
Talent needs a useful way to present experience, while recruiters need a way to find and assess relevant profiles.
- Industry: Media and entertainment technology (EntTech).
- Business model: two-sided marketplace for talent and recruiters.
- Core problem: talent discovery that relied on personal networks and informal referrals.
- Industry
- Media & Entertainment
- Services / expertise
- Talent Marketplace Development · Casting Platform · Media & Entertainment
- Business model
- Two-sided marketplace connecting talent with recruiters
- Platforms
- Responsive web platform with talent portal, recruiter portal and PWA capabilities
- Team size
- 24 professionals
- Duration
- 10 months
- Client website
- Visit Milestone101 ↗
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02 / The project
What did Milestone 101 need from a two-sided talent marketplace?
The platform gives each side its own journey and connects them through opportunities and discovery.
Talent-side requirements (artists and crew)
- Detailed professional profiles covering skills, experience, physical attributes and portfolio.
- Structured upload of photos, videos, showreels and audio samples.
- A personalized feed of casting calls, auditions and job opportunities matched to each profile.
- Application, status tracking and callback management.
- A verification process to confirm profiles are genuine and reduce misrepresentation.
- Premium membership with enhanced visibility, priority search placement and unlimited applications.
Recruiter-side requirements (casting directors and production houses)
- Multi-parameter talent search across age, gender, physical attributes, skills, location, experience, availability, languages and specializations.
- Posting of detailed audition requirements and management of incoming applications.
- Team-based shortlisting, comparison and selection.
- Verified company profiles for production houses and agencies.
- Direct, secure messaging with selected talent.
Platform-wide requirements
- An authentic, verified database of performer, crew and recruiter profiles as the core value proposition.
- Identity verification, content moderation and reporting tools for trust and safety.
- Payment gateway integration for tiered subscription plans for talent and recruiters.
- A full-featured, high-performance mobile experience.
- Profile performance data, application tracking and engagement metrics.
- Google AdSense on free-tier content as an additional revenue stream.
03 / The project
Challenges of building a trusted casting marketplace
Marketplace dynamics
- Serving actors, dancers, background artists, technicians, directors, DOPs, sound engineers, casting directors, production houses and talent agencies, each with distinct profile fields and workflows.
- Balancing the number of profiles needed to attract recruiters against the quality standards that keep serious casting professionals engaged.
Profiles and content
- Onboarding flows that encourage complete profiles from users with varying technical skills.
- Preventing fake profiles, misrepresented experience and fraudulent casting calls.
- Capturing a wide range of physical attributes, skills and regional industry variations, from Bollywood and regional cinema to OTT, theatre and international productions.
Search and discovery
- Filtering by age range, height and weight, ethnicity, skills, languages, location, availability dates and union membership simultaneously.
- Ranking results by relevance to the casting brief rather than by popularity.
- Balancing discoverability with protection of sensitive personal information.
Trust and safety
- A scalable KYC process for both talent identity and recruiter legitimacy.
- Safeguards that protect vulnerable talent, especially newcomers, from exploitation.
- Moderation of thousands of user-uploaded photos, videos and profile entries.
Technical performance
- Smooth showreel playback for casting directors reviewing many reels in one session.
- Up-to-date availability calendars across time zones and shooting schedules.
- Subscription payments through Razorpay supporting UPI, cards, wallets and net banking.
- Search engine visibility for thousands of individual talent and casting pages.
04 / The project
How did Bizzeonline build Milestone 101's public website?
- SEO-optimized architecture: Next.js 14 static site generation for talent and casting pages so individual profiles can be indexed and drive organic traffic.
- Homepage with dual onboarding paths, success stories and platform statistics for talent and recruiters.
- Talent directory of verified profiles, browsable by type (actor, dancer, background artist, technical crew) and region.
- Public casting calls board that attracts organic talent sign-ups from search.
- Tailwind CSS design system with a clean, professional look and responsive layouts across devices.
05 / The project
Content hub for entertainment news and organic discovery
- Custom headless CMS for blog, news and platform updates.
- Open Graph protocol, structured data markup and XML sitemaps for search and social sharing.
- Static generation for SEO-critical pages and server-side rendering for dynamic content.
- Google AdSense contextual advertising on free-tier content pages for supplementary revenue.
06 / The project
Talent portal: profiles, portfolios and applications for artists and crew
Profile creation and management
- Step-by-step profile builder covering personal details, physical attributes, skills, languages, experience, training and contact preferences.
- Multi-category skill tagging for acting styles, dance forms, technical skills, instruments, special abilities and industry roles.
- Physical attributes module for height, weight, age range, ethnicity, hair and eye color and distinctive features.
- Touch-optimized portfolio galleries built with Swiper for headshots, full-body, character and action shots.
- Video reel upload to AWS S3 with CloudFront delivery for smooth showreel playback.
- Experience timeline with role credits, productions, directors and duration, plus training and credentials.
- Real-time availability calendar and links to Instagram, YouTube, IMDb and LinkedIn.
Opportunities and applications
- Personalized casting feed matched to profile attributes.
- One-click application with a cover note and portfolio link.
- Application tracker showing pending, shortlisted, callback and rejected status.
- Saved opportunities with alerts for similar casting calls.
- Secure, monitored messaging with casting directors.
Premium membership features
- Featured placement at the top of search results and recommended lists.
- Unlimited applications, removing free-tier caps.
- Analytics dashboard with profile views, search appearances and recruiter engagement.
- Identity-verified badge displayed on the profile.
07 / The project
Recruiter portal and trust and safety for casting professionals
Talent search and discovery
- Simultaneous filtering by 20+ parameters, including age range, gender, physical attributes, ethnicity, skills, location, availability, experience, languages and union membership.
- Intelligent ranking of results against the casting brief.
- Grid-based visual browse mode for quick assessment of physical fit.
- Saved search alerts when new profiles match criteria.
- Side-by-side comparison of shortlisted candidates and their portfolios.
Casting and project management
- Casting call creator with role requirements, production details, compensation type, audition format and timeline.
- Application inbox with bulk shortlist, reject and callback actions.
- Project folders for role-specific shortlists.
- Collaborative review with production team members and structured feedback.
- Audition scheduling with calendar integration and multi-round callback tracking.
Recruiter credibility
- Verified company profiles with history, past productions and team details.
- KYC-verified recruiter badge.
- Mutual review and rating system that lets talent rate the casting process.
Trust and safety system
- Document-based identity verification for talent (ID proof, professional references) and recruiters (company registration and casting credentials).
- AI-assisted automated content screening combined with manual review of flagged content.
- Granular privacy controls for profile visibility, contact preferences and information display.
- Report and block tools for fraudulent casting calls, inappropriate behavior or misrepresentation.
- In-platform safety guidelines that help talent identify legitimate opportunities.
08 / The project
How does Milestone 101 handle memberships and payments?
Payments and billing
- UPI, cards, wallets and net banking support.
- Recurring billing with automated renewals, failure handling and grace periods.
Analytics and platform intelligence
- Google Analytics 4 for behavior, acquisition and conversion tracking.
- Google Tag Manager for event tracking and marketing pixels.
- Profile performance dashboard showing view trends, search appearance rates and application-to-callback ratios.
- Admin dashboards tracking marketplace health, hire confirmation rates and user engagement.
09 / The project
Team, timeline and delivery methodology
- Delivery phases: discovery and marketplace strategy; UX research and persona development; UI/UX design for talent, recruiter and mobile experiences; core architecture and database design; talent portal development; recruiter portal development (in parallel); search engine and matching algorithm; media upload and streaming pipeline; Razorpay integration; trust and safety features; integration testing and QA; invite-only beta launch; full production launch and stabilization.
- Agile Scrum with 2-week sprints (20 sprints total).
- Parallel development tracks for the talent portal, recruiter portal and backend.
- Weekly stakeholder demos and review sessions.
- Monthly beta testing with real artists and casting directors.
- A/B testing to optimize onboarding conversion.
- CI/CD deployment pipeline and a phased rollout from beta to full launch.
| Role | Count | Responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Business Analyst | 1 | Requirements gathering, marketplace flow documentation, use case mapping |
| Project Manager | 1 | Project coordination, sprint planning, stakeholder communication |
| UI/UX Designer | 3 | Talent portal design, recruiter portal design, mobile UX, profile builder flows |
| Frontend Developers | 5 | React.js/Next.js 14 development, Tailwind CSS/MUI implementation, Swiper integration |
| Backend Developers | 4 | API development, search engine, media processing, subscription logic |
| Mobile Developer | 2 | Mobile-optimized experience, PWA capabilities |
| DevOps/AWS Engineer | 2 | AWS infrastructure, CloudFront CDN, CI/CD pipelines, media delivery |
| QA Engineer | 3 | Functional testing, search accuracy, payment flow, media upload testing |
| Content Strategist | 2 | Industry content hub, onboarding copy, SEO content strategy |
| Video/Media Specialist | 1 | Video upload optimization, streaming quality, media processing pipeline |
10 / The project
Technology stack behind Milestone 101
| Layer | Technologies |
|---|---|
| Frontend framework | React.js, Next.js 14.2.35 |
| Rendering strategy | SSR (dynamic profiles), SSG (casting pages, SEO content) |
| CSS and UI components | Tailwind CSS, Material UI (MUI), Emotion (CSS-in-JS) |
| JavaScript libraries | Swiper (portfolio galleries, media carousels) |
| Web server and protocol | Next.js 14 built-in server, HTTP/3 |
| Backend | Node.js, Express.js, RESTful APIs |
| Databases | MongoDB (profiles, casting calls, applications), PostgreSQL (subscriptions, payments, user accounts) |
| Search engine | Elasticsearch (multi-parameter talent search, profile ranking) |
| Media storage and CDN | AWS S3, Amazon CloudFront |
| Media processing | AWS Lambda + FFmpeg (video transcoding, thumbnails), Sharp (image optimization, WebP, resizing) |
| Cloud platform | AWS (EC2, S3, CloudFront, SES, RDS) |
| Authentication | JWT tokens, OAuth 2.0, OTP verification |
| Payments | Razorpay (subscriptions, one-time payments, UPI, cards, wallets, net banking) |
| Analytics and tags | Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager |
| AWS SES (notifications, application updates, subscription alerts) | |
| Security | SSL/TLS, AWS WAF, role-based access control, data encryption |
| Monitoring | AWS CloudWatch, error tracking |
| DevOps | Docker, GitHub Actions CI/CD, automated deployment |
| SEO and social | Open Graph protocol, structured data markup, XML sitemaps |
| CMS | Custom headless CMS for blog, news and platform content |
11 / The project
Outcomes and impact for Milestone 101
Marketplace adoption
- Verified profile system established platform credibility.
- Casting directors and production houses onboarded and actively posting opportunities.
- Casting calls spanning film, OTT, theatre and brand campaigns.
- Reach across multiple countries and regions, extending beyond the initial domestic focus.
Search, discovery and bookings
- Casting directors searching and discovering talent efficiently with multi-parameter Elasticsearch search.
- Audition applications, talent bookings and project confirmations facilitated through the platform.
- Video showreels and verified badges reported to increase shortlisting and recruiter contact.
- Reduced recruiter response time compared with traditional offline methods.
Performance and engagement
- Sub-2-second page loads and strong platform uptime on AWS.
- Efficient CloudFront media delivery and reliable video playback across devices and connection speeds.
- High mobile traffic share, consistent with the mobile-first design, and PWA capabilities used by returning users.
- Strong session duration, pages per session and return visits, with active profile maintenance.
Revenue and trust
- Tiered premium subscription model launched, with monthly recurring revenue growth and subscription renewals.
- High payment success rates through Razorpay and supplementary AdSense revenue from free-tier content.
- Identity verification in place, with rapid response to safety and fraud reports.
- No payment security incidents reported.
Industry impact
- Partnerships with acting schools and performing arts institutions.
- Adoption by production houses as a digital casting tool.
- Trackable, documented and transparent recruitment processes in place of personal referrals and unstructured auditions.
- A commercially viable subscription foundation in which both talent and recruiters pay for value received.
Technology used
ReactNext.jsNode.jsMongoDBPostgreSQLElasticsearchAWS S3CloudFrontRazorpay
Questions about this project
What was the Milestone101 project about?
A two-sided talent marketplace bringing professional portfolios, casting calls, recruiter search and talent-management activity into one platform.
What did the Milestone101 experience need to support?
Talent needs a useful way to present experience, while recruiters need a way to find and assess relevant profiles. The platform gives each side its own journey and connects them through opportunities and discovery.
Bizzeonline is a brand of Ackrolix. Project scope and visuals come from the shared delivery portfolio; this account has been edited for Bizzeonline. About the team.
