Romoni

Romoni is Uber for beauty and tailor services. On the customer end, we are addressing the on-demand quality service need. On the service provider end, the majority of skilled women are largely underpaid. But they can earn 3 times more than their current earnings through Romoni. So, in current state they’re more prone to financial dependency which facilitates an economically exclusive society.

We provide skill training and facilitate later stage growth financing to convert skilled women from freelancers to micro-entrepreneurs. Through our platform we are providing on-demand beauty, wellness, and tailoring services to female customers. Thus, we are connecting micro-entrepreneurs with customers who want door-to-door services. We are enabling women with creative skill set to start and grow their own businesses through our platform.

By providing the necessary skill sets and growth financing to women entrepreneurs and connecting them with a consumer base, we're ensuring a steady revenue stream and financial freedom.

We are aiming towards an economically inclusive society where shared prosperity is a priority. 

In Bangladesh, more than 200,000 skilled women already took training from different training institutes. And there are more than 100,000 women doing beauty, tailoring and other micro scale businesses from home. These women have the capacity and capability to become full-fledged micro-entrepreneurs if they can secure small loans to buy raw material stock for extra orders, marketing on social media, branding, hiring additional employees etc. while starting up. 

But most of them lack the reliable transaction data of their businesses which makes them credit unworthy in the eyes of the banks and NBFIs. So, starting a business or expanding it, both become difficult.

On the consumer side, more than 80% of urban and semi urban women face challenges availing quality services and products from trusted women professionals. Bridging this gap between both sides to kick-start an economic revolution is just a logical step.

We are working to improve the lives of the lower income semi-skilled and skilled women who work longer hours with less pay. We are constantly receiving their feedback before and after the training sessions that we arrange and the customer reviews also help us to better pinpoint the weaknesses and the needs of these micro-entrepreneurs.

The transaction data of these businesses generated on our platform can be translated into actionable insights for the NBFIs, who can use these data to provide small loans to these businesses, which in turn, are willing to pay higher interest for emergency capital that suits their needs. Recently Romoni has been awarded for a project of UNCDF, with UNCDF we will pilot the fin-tech model in Bangladesh.

We are facilitating our service providers with skill training and later stage growth financing through our fin-tech solution. And we are providing our customers with door to door beauty, wellness, and tailoring services.    

Let’s briefly review how Romoni works. First, you let Romoni know that you need a service. Then, Romoni asks you where you are and the time you want to schedule the service you request. Next, Romoni shows you a list of nearby service providers and tells you to choose as per your preferences. After your service is completed, Romoni asks you how it went. You rate the service and the cost is charged through bKash or cash payment.

To implement this, we have to use Google Map API for Geolocation, Firebase for Notifications and SMS API for sending SMSs, Payment API for cashless payment. For real-time customer support we have also used Facebook Messenger Plugin.

·      UML tools and techniques - MS Visio, Draw.io

·      Database modeling tools - MySQL Workbench

·      Project planning and management - Trello

·      Software development methodologies – Agile, Scrum

·      Testing tools and frameworks - Selenium, JMeter

·      Issue management tools - Bugzilla

·      UX Tools - Adobe XD, Invision

·      UI and graphic Tools - Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD

·      Programming languages - Java, PHP, Swift, Python, SQL

·      Technologies, libraries and frameworks - Laravel, VueJS, NodeJS, JQuery, JSON, Bootstrap, D3.js, Oauth2 security,

·      Mobile - iPhone SDK, Android SDK,

·      Web Services - REST API, Facebook API, Messenger API, Google Map API, Payment API

·      IDE - PhpStorm, Android Studio, XCode

·      Versioning Control - Git

·      Databases/Data storages - MySQL, ElasticSearch

·      Application and web servers - Nginx

·      Cloud computing - DigitalOcean

What makes our solution innovative is our 360-degree platform. We are providing training to prepare skilled micro-entrepreneurs, we are catering a strong consumer base especially for them so that they can have a steady revenue stream, and we are facilitating small loans for them with the help of the transaction data they’re generating on our platform so that they can expand their businesses.  

And we are also ensuring that both our training and financing opportunities work effectively through different types of incentives. We finance 50% of the cost of the training  and the recipient provides the rest. In this way, the recipient has a greater drive to actually use her training as she’s paying for half of it from her own pocket. If the training were to be provided for free, most of the recipients would have taken the training simply because it was free and they wouldn’t have put it in good use as we’ve seen from countless other similar endeavors.

We are also designing a mechanism to ensure that the service providers who receive the loans actually pay it back on time. We will incentivize them to save a percentage of their monthly service commission on our platform so that that can be used to pay off the monthly repayment of the bank.

The way Romoni functions is this - First we do a physical verification of a service provider and then assess her skills. In the meantime, we also conduct a survey to get to know her vocational needs. Then according to her skill level, we provide her training. After the successful completion of training, we on-board her to our platform and continuously monitor her traction. After compiling her service records and previous survey results, we can better understand the growth potential of her business. 

So far, we’ve provided training to all of our 500+ service providers and conducted surveys among a further 1,200 potential service providers who are in the pipeline to be on-boarded to our platform. Our data shows a small loan of 500 to 3,000 USD (depending on the existing state of the individual’s business) can help expand the business to generate 2 to 3 times the revenue it’s currently earning.

These micro-businesses suffer from lack of marketing budget, lack of additional staff, scarce raw materials for additional services, and additional equipment to accommodate more customers. A small loan can easily help these businesses to have better foothold in their industry. Increasing their capacity to accommodate 2-3 additional customers each day will ultimately pave the way for these businesses to finance their expansion in the future by themselves.

Currently we have 500+ service providers who are receiving service orders through our platform. All of them have received training from us. We are planning to facilitate growth financing to around 50% of our current service providers.

We are working to increase the number of our service providers to 2,400+ within a year. We will provide training to all of them. We estimate around 60% of them will need growth financing. 

Within five years we are aiming to on-board 41,000+ service providers. Again, all of them will receive training from us. We expect around 75% of them will require growth financing within one year of joining our platform.

 Currently we have 11,000+ unique customers. 51% of them have ordered services at least 3 or more times and 31% of them have ordered services at least 2 times from us. As we’re working to introduce nanny and maid services along with our current beauty, wellness, and tailoring services within the year; we expect our unique customers will increase to 53,000+ within a year and in five years we will have around 350,000 to 450,000 unique customers; around half of which will at least order two services a week.

About 60% of our current 500+ service providers are freelancers and the rest have at least 2 personnel working under them. With growth financing, we expect at least half of the freelancers will turn into micro-entrepreneurs with 2-3 personnel working under them. And within a year, the existing micro-entrepreneurs will increase their staff and equipment to facilitate two to three times the services they’re currently providing.

As stated earlier, we are working to on-board at least 2,400 service providers within the next year. We estimate of these 2,400; 60-65% will be freelancers and the rest will be micro-entrepreneurs. After growth financing, they’ll each employ additional 2-3 persons or more. In case of tailoring, nanny, and maid services that number may potentially reach to 8-10 persons. So, within a year around 15,000 people will start earning 2 to 3 times of their current income.

And in 5 years, after on-boarding 41,000+ service providers, we expect that number to reach close to 200,000. We believe within that time frame more and more businesses will start following our model. And if 2 or 3 businesses successfully implement that model, anywhere between 500,000 to 700,000 people will be able to leave their 48-72 hours a week job and will start earning around 100-150 USD a week, instead of 25-50 USD.

And on the customer front, people will start saving hours and hours of their lives which they will get to spend with their families and have a convenient and hassle-free life.

Financial Barrier - Providing skill training to hundreds of service providers requires a substantial amount of capital investment. 

Cultural Barrier - People in Bangladesh are still somewhat the idea of women working outside of their home. And the majority are still against the idea of women providing door-to-door services .

Market Barrier - Finding and on-boarding skilled service providers is a substantial challenge for our platform.

Financial Barrier - We are actively negotiating with investors to avail funds. We’re participating in different accelerator programs and applying for grants. We’ve already received grants from the UNCDF and raised first round of investment capital. Not to mention we’re already generating revenue through our sales of services.   

Cultural Barrier - We believe becoming financially independent can unlock the true potential of a person. We’re actively engaged in conversation about women empowerment and women led micro-enterprises on different platforms. During our training sessions, we also engage in conversation with our service providers about how they too can realize their dreams of being self-employed and earning the amount they deserve.

Market Barrier - We understand that no one can claim to be skilled unless they get the correct training and opportunities to employ those training. So, instead of just looking for skilled service providers, we welcome people who have the willingness to work and provide them with the correct training to transform them into skilled human resource.

We currently have 12 full-time staff on our solution team. We also have 4 advisers. 

Armin Zaman Khan, 

Co-founder and CEO

BBA from IBA, 6 years of experience in retail banking (SCB) and technology project management (A2i)

Tarique Ibne Haider

Co-founder and COO

BSc from KUET, 6 years of experience in sales and managing operation (Linde and ssd-tech)

Abidur Rahman Mallik

Co-founder and CTO

BSc from KUET, 6 years of experience in developing technology products (Samsung)

We believe we have a perfect combination of business, product and tech. All of us are equally passionate and giving full-time effort to deliver the solution to the problem.

We are currently partnered with Marketplace to acquire unique customers for our platform. We are working with brands like Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser and others for their product activation on our platform. We are working with the UNCDF and multiple different banks and NBFIs to facilitate small loans for our service providers.

Our key customers are urban females between the ages of 16-40, who desire door-to-door beauty, wellness, tailoring, nanny, and maid services. Our key beneficiaries are urban semi-skilled and skilled females between the ages of 18-40, who earn around 25-50 USD only every week.  

Our beneficiaries provide door to door beauty, wellness, and tailoring services to our customers. Our customers book the services and the service provider they want through our iOS and android app, website, or through our Facebook page.

We take 20% service commission, and the beneficiaries keep the remaining 80%. On average our ticket size is around 18 USD. So, a service provider who attends 2 tickets per day and works 20 days a month, earns 3 to 4 times of which she used to earn normally.

We are working on a mix of it to fund our work. We’ve raised investment capital, received grants from the UNCDF, and are actively generating revenue by selling services. We are also preparing the logistics to sell beauty products through our platform.

As the goals of Tiger IT Foundation (creating high-paying jobs across geographies and demographics of Bangladesh, and providing cost effective access to skill training) match with our goals too, we anticipate a greater synergy can be levied through our collaboration. 

Our financial barrier can be effectively overcome through the funding we’ll receive upon selection. It will effectively help us to materialize our next five years' plan.

The cultural barrier we are facing can be eased a bit more as we will be able to spread our message on a broader range through different platform upon selection.

We also understand that being a pioneer in the area of providing door-to-door beauty, wellness, and tailoring services means that we can extract more benefits from the mentoring of the industry leaders. Their guidance and suggestions will be invaluable to efficiently scale our operation. Being selected can facilitate the opportunity to access the rich pool of mentors available both at home and abroad.

Partnering with Venture Capitals like BD Venture limited, SBK Tech Venture, or Lightcastle Partners will be immense in boosting our expanding capability. Partnering with top corporates like GP, Bashundhara, BEXIMCO will ensure a potential growth to our customer base and brand visibility. Working with banks and NBFIs like BRAC Bank, City Bank, Bank Asia, IPDC Finance, IDLC Finance will ensure that our service providers will get the best service possible while availing loans.