Hellotask Ltd.

Problem:
Dhaka has a long tradition of dependence on house maids every day for every family and finding a reliable maids whenever needed is a real challenge. Most of the maids are unskilled and uneducated and poor.  

Solution:
If we could train the domestic workers, make them skilled and get them connected with customers on demand, through a secure platform that problem could easily be solved. Just like Uber, this could bring thousands of maids under tech and serve millions of families on demand. 

Impact:
A working woman in Bangladesh has to work in both at home and at office. hiring a skilled maids whenever needed is a life saver for urban dwellers. And a $90 per month earning maid can earn more than $200 that will gradually create the 3rd biggest driver of the economy of Bangladesh with low income people. 

Every single family in Dhaka has atleast one house maid and that dependence has created the biggest market of low income people. Most of the maids are unskilled, uneducated and customers has trust issues too due to theft related incidence. Every family wants a maid on a regular basis everyday but the most common issue is these maids don't show up in the morning without prior notice and customers specially the working women gets into tremendous trouble. So in 99% cases, customers are not happy and the maids' income is reportedly poor even less than $100 a month. 

This has created a new problem. Over the last few years 700K maids have left country to mostly Middle East for more income but 36% of them returned back being raped or tortured or deceived. So, house maid is one of the biggest issues in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is on of the fastest growing economies in the world. So, in the city areas, working couple, unit families and higher middle class have increased in last 10 years. So, these people are totally dependent on house maids to help in household and look after babies. Our Target Customers uses smartphone. 

If you offer a working woman in urban areas to choose between unlimited make up kits or a skilled and reliable house maid to help in daily chores, look after babies and elderly persons, she would definitely go for the maid. Hellotask app is life saver for the city dwellers. 

Besides, a $90 earning maid being skilled is now getting $170-$210 that is empowering the low income women bringing under tech. Maids don't have to roam around in search of work. They can now work based on her preferred time, location, work choice. This maids now receive payment through mobile bank accounts and that helped them have savings, financial security and made them independent. This is how we are building one of the biggest market of low income women. 

Hellotask is an app to hire skilled and verified domestic workers on demand. It's like Uber. Whenever a customer needs a maid, either instantly or for sever days when her maid is on leave or sick, she can hire a maid through our app. Customer can subscribe for whole month for a regular basis. 

Based on customers' need, our services are: 

1. Instant Service (Hourly service)
2. Package (7-10 days or Monthly regularly) 

So, for the city dwellers whose lives are dependent on house maids to be helped in daily chores, cook food, dish washing, laundry or babysitting, this app is like a gift. And for the maids, this is the way to earn more utilizing their free time working on Hellotask being freelance.

If you are a working woman and have to start for office at 8am. Who will then make your family breakfast, prepare your children ready for school? Oh, I forgot, you have to be ready for office too. So, you have a maid to help in. But imagine what happens if she doesn't show up for days? No way to get a maid instantly. You have to cook, clean and wash by yourself. Or what if you found, your things are missing and only person who can steal, is your maid. You sacked her off. How would you trust someone else when you have no idea where they live, where they go? 

So, Hellotask is a simple app for the city dwellers to hire a verified maids on demand. No other company or agency is providing on demand maid but us. we have literally brought the revolution in Bangladesh with maid service app. Now you can easily hire a maid instantly or for days or book for a whole month. Security and skills are assured. 

Maid service is one of the biggest issues in Bangladesh. One of most ignored community in income statistic but the most important part in daily household. Every single family needs atleast on domestic workers everyday to help in daily chores, babysitting or elderly care. But no current option to hire a skilled or verified maid on demand. After introducing our new app, within a year we have:

• 48K App Downloads
• 32K registered customers
• 12K unique paying customers of which 40% Recurring
• $60K GMV in 1 year since service started in Feb 2018
• 519 maids on board

Hellotask has been a brand for maid service and one of the emerging and most promising startups within a very short period of time. This has been possible due to the ready market and people grabbed our service like cookie monster. 

Users in

2018: 5,000 

2019: 32,000 (Till Date)

2020: 100,000

2024: 1,000,000

Goals for the next year:

• Building a smooth, user-friendly app solving all the current issues
• Making 15000 maids on board and ensuring training
• Digital Payment will be integrated in app 
• Insurance coverage for all users and maid
• Scale to Chittagong and Sylhet Division

Goals for the next 5 years:

• Making 100K maids on board
• 1M customers
• Smartphone ready maids with smart app 
• All urban areas (district cities) under operation
• Introducing service market place with freelance service providers on demand

Barriers for goals within next year:

• Limited fund to scale up 
• Small team 
• Training process is lengthy 
• Legal risk factors regarding theft by maids, abuse/harassment by customers

Barriers for goals within next 5 year:

• Introduction of giant competitors with lots of investment 
• Making uneducated maids smartphone ready
• Acquisition of maids in new localities of different cultures/superstitions/religious bindings
• Legal risk factors regarding theft by maids, abuse/harassment by customers

Planning to overcome the barriers:

• Making Cashflow positive (Will be in CF breakeven within two months) and raising fund to gain escape velocity to be a market leader. 
• Building an experienced and enthusiastic team
• Oxfam in Bangladesh (NGO) are helping in maid acquisition, training and ration project. 
• We always show safe notes to the users and train maids to be careful and handle any adverse situation of abuse or harassment. Regardless, an legal team is in planning to be built. But for now we have legal consultant. 
• As most of the maids are uneducated and don't use smartphone, it's not that easy for any other company to acquire and connect them with customers. We have developed that secret recipe in our app to automatically connect them. And the long training process discourages any company to play in. 

Team is the key of building the best startup. We have a small but very dedicated team. 

• 12 full time employees
• 2 remotely working app developers
• 4 part time call center executives

Two founders work full time along with the employees.

The first thing to solve a problem is feeling how bad it is. Our journey began with the regular disappointment when our maids didn't show up without prior notice. So, we two brothers came up with the idea of on demand maid service in Dhaka. But in order to connect them, maids need to have a smartphone. So it took us one year to find out the best business model to connect maids on app. 

Despite being a graduate of agriculture, I am a tech enthusiast and my brother is an entrepreneur, studying in department of innovation and entrepreneurship. Together we dreamed of building an on demand platform for maids. We tried a lot but no business model worked for the first year. We didn't give up. We focused on the best way to figure it out. 

Now all maids are freelance, we now can connect them with customers based on their choice of location, work and leisure time. Now we have developed a model that can scale. We are now focusing on slum areas with recruitment team that connects maids on app after training. 

Maid service is such a messy thing that every company feels uncomfortable working with. That's why in Bangladesh, no company has been developed with maid service. But we, this young enthusiastic team have made it. We are building a platform of millions of low income domestic workers to solve the biggest problem of household and create the 3rd driver of our economy in five years. 

We are a platform of freelance maids to connect them on demand like Uber. So, we are focusing on two things. One is recruitment and training, the other one is marketing. 

In order to recruit and training two reputed NGOs are going to work with us.

1. Oxfam in Bangladesh: According to the partnership with Oxfam, A $12M project will kick off from this September, 2019 to help recruit 16000 maids and train them over next 4 years. This is a project through with the maids will be formally employed through Hellotask platform. 
2. Brac Bangladesh: Brac is the biggest NGO in Bangladesh. They will help us recruit and training thousands of maids. This will take place from November. We are in discussion with them right now. 

For marketing of maids we have been working with a lot of companies as B2B partnership. Some of those are:

• Banglalink (Telco)
• Romoni.xyz (Marketplace)
• Daraz (E-commerce)
• Mercantile Bank 
• GhoreBazar (E-commerce)
• Shuttle (Transport for women)
• Beauty Parlors

All the domestic workers work freelance and we share revenue directly with them at 70% and 30% ratio. Customers pay hourly or monthly basis for a maid and the maid gets her share at 70% and we cut out 30%. Thus a maid who used to earn only $90 per month, now being skilled, on our platform earns $170-$210 monthly. 

Most of the workers work at different houses at different time. The leisure hours when they don't have any work, they can work on Hellotask app. A freelance worker can work full time if she wants. We connect them based on their expected time to work, work lists and location of work. So, after finishing the work of on demand service, customers pay to maids directly and the maids collect the payment. 

We collect the 100% of the payment from maids afterwards and the maids are sent their 70% in their mobile bank account weekly. This is because they don't want to keep their share regularly because of the risk that they might spend it completely.

For monthly service, customers need to pay full amount in advance and maids are sent their share after the month she worked. 

We are now providing two services:

1. Instant maids (on demand)

2. Package (7/10 days or for a month regularly with dedicated maid)

As we are dreaming to build the Uber for maid service, we need fund to fuel it. Initially when started, we funded of our own. My father helped with primary investment. Later on, Mercantile Bank gave us loan (debt). After one year we have raised fund from angel investors and still looking for investment. We are applying for different grants, talking to the organization and hopefully we can have some grants too.

Here Oxfam in Bangladesh comes in with $12M project to be a partner for next 4 years to improve capacity in technology, marketing and help recruit and train 16000 maids. This will save a lot in acquisition an training of maids. But we will still need to ensure job for those workers. 

But we are focusing on becoming self dependent as in cash flow positive. Within October 2019, we will be profitable. Then we will raise a bigger round of investment to expand all over the country with on demand maid service. After that we will go beyond the boarder. 

Partnership with Tiger IT Foundation is not only for winning some sort of money, this will also open up the global network of experts, mentors and investors. We are working on Women Empowerment, specially with low income people with a view to creating a new profession of dignity and the third driver of the economy of Bangladesh. 

So, it's a great opportunity if we get extra hands to fight together against poverty and discrimination by solving one of the biggest problems of household creating thousands of jobs for women. As for partnership with Oxfam, we will going to get thousands of skilled domestic workers over next 4years and being a for-profit startup we will on board another thousands on wards, our biggest challenge will be ensuring job for everyone and bringing the customers from traditional service to technology. So, the winning money will be used in customer acquisition and tech development. 

We are applying to get funded, to get mentored and to get supported for the future we are building. 

Being a social business platform we want to work with NGOs, Development Organizations to help secure the rights of the domestic workers, recruitment and training of them. 

We want to partner with

• Plan International
• UNDP
• Brac Bangladesh
• Action Aid
• Care Bangladesh
• EMK Centre
• Ministry of ICT, Bangladesh

In order to customer acquisition, marketing, branding we need to partner with private companies (B2B) as well: 

• E-Commerce Platforms
• Market Places
• Super Shops
• Beauty Parlors
• Telco(s)