Kuhustle

Marginalized populations all over the world face lack of sufficient ‘decent work’. Unfortunately, the bulk of recruitment opportunities is not to be found in ‘traditional jobs with large companies or the government’, but in the flexible economy of startups and micro-enterprises.

Kuhustle aspires to facilitate marginalized communities by providing access to digital-age work, empower them to unravel their gifts and create future jobs, better adapted and gain the right skills to successfully enter the jobs market.

This solution in a creative and innovative way will inspire, coach and facilitate marginalized communities globally by giving them access to digital-age work, start their own businesses using tools such as co-creation and crowdfunding and creating a healthy entrepreneurial climate and training to be able to join the workforce. We also link up with like-minded individuals, companies and institutions to offer a win-win situation of how we can answer social and environmental challenges.

The solution seeks to enable small and new businesses, prosper and create good jobs through access to capital, networks, and technology. Despite economic growth in most African countries 75%  of youth belong to the ‘working poor’.Of Africa's nearly 420 million youth a third are jobless. These youth operate mainly in the informal sector; dispossessed of rights and social security, usually earning 2$ a day under hazardous conditions. 

Global youth population is at 1.3billion of which unemployment stands at 13.6%. The problem is heightened by the skills mismatch as businesses find it difficult to locate right candidates for their positions, similarly young people with advanced degrees find themselves over qualified for these positions. 

 Lack of entrepreneurship and life skills education where school curriculum favors traditional academics while neglecting vocational, entrepreneurial and employability training. Access to loans in general is a hindrance which is partially due to lack of collateral and high interest rates. According to world bank <1% portfolios of loan providers are directed to those under the age of 30. 

Lastly the digital divide contributes to a huge disparity in accessing digital-age jobs where technology ,access and use of the internet plays a critical role.

Reference

1https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Images/high_5s/Job_youth_Africa_Job_youth_Africa.pdf

2https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_737648.pdf

Talent is equally spread but opportunities are not. The solution provides a platform where businesses can access professional and affordable services. Similarly, individuals are also able to access digital-age work. It is a common market place where we match clients with the best talents.

 Secondly there is a training component that takes a two thronged approach based on our curriculum; One, training on employability skills, along with soft skills, hard skills and professional skills. After this, in cooperation with the Public and Private sector we connect the youth to opportunities towards internship/and or ‘decent jobs’. Two, entrepreneurial youth are supported to ideate their own business ventures and undergo training on areas such as; customer and product validation, business model canvas among many other topics.

 Lastly, for the entrepreneurial track, there is a funding component where they undergo a crowdfunding training to raise money for their business. The small business crowdfund for between $1000 - $2000 which from our learning is sufficient considering the level and the networks that they have. We also have a match-funding element to this, where if you hit 50% of your target amount we much it up to a maximum of $500.

Kuhuste is working with over 30,000 freelancers registered on the platform and over $920K worth of jobs posted. Our target population is mainly the ages 18-35 who are looking for digital-age work and have expertise in their areas of competence. 

We have managed to employ more features and functionalities based on continuous feedback from both our businesses and freelancers on the platform. Initially, the micro-tendering platform had no limits to the number of bids but from feedback we reduced it to a maximum of five bids. Also, we have integrated one payment AP. We have a robust community that offer real value.

We also want to have a one stop shop for most of our offerings. Our training program targeting the ages 18-35 with a special focus on women starting their business. The program has skilled over 620 youth and supported 150 youth start their business. In 3 years we have run 6 crowdfunding campaigns raising over $100,000. In this regard, we are looking to have this model across different countries in Africa and globally. We have a strong alumni community,  a safe space to have peer to peer mentoring and where they can do business between themselves.

Unemployment denies low income countries from benefiting from the huge youthful population dividend. According to the world Bank many jobs are available from flexible working economies like startups and micro-enterprises supported by technology and access to finance. 

 Kuhustle facilitates access to jobs by connecting businesses to talent and correspondingly connecting young people with digital age work. In addition, the training equips the youth with the skills to successfully start, fund and run their businesses or prepare them for ‘decent work’. This is in line with enabling small and new businesses to create jobs through access to capital, networks and technology.

Kuhustle is a freelancer for Africa. We have made important adaptations to our model tailored to African markets. Our competition is Hooros https://hooros.co.za. It compares to us in terms of services offered, same pool of freelancers and businesses.

The others are crew pencil https://www.crewpencil.com/. As much as it is a freelancers platform the difference is in the target market, as it connects production companies to crew. What sets Kuhustle apart is that we have modifications that are customized to the African market. 

 These modifications are lower-price point, partnering with knowledge partners for skills, and providing training for users on the skills needed to deliver jobs. We have also provided simple to use and sign up/login that allows use of gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft accounts. In addition, we have incorporated digital mobile payments or card for easy transactions. 

Our unique proposition is lower price point, aggregated mobile payments and payments guarantee. Also, we connect you to our pool of vetted experts to work on short term “gigs” or join your team for long-term considerations.

The solution is an existing technology that uses market place platform.

Kuhustle is an online marketplace that connects skilled youths to individuals and organizations looking to hire professional and affordable service providers on a project basis. The platform is able has the following features:

1.Project submission where customers upload jobs showing description, budget description and profiles.

2.Freelancers create an online profile with their skills, location, qualifications, work experience and other details.

3.Project bidding where freelancers bid for projects and customers invite selected freelancers to bid for projects.

4.Monetization where freelancer subscribe to be able to access online work under the following packages;

• Kuhustle single -This is an introduction in case you have never done this before and want to try out. It's  a day's pass.
• Kuhustle plus - For the professional that is looking for as many jobs as they can handle. It gives you a 30 day pass.
• Kuhustle premium - For the professional looking for a great deal and some peace of mind. It gives you a 90 day pass.

5.Payment gateway to ensure freelancers get paid.

As a community of online workers our objective as consultants will be matching the stakeholders with the required skills and if any particular set of skills is lacking, offering training to our constituents on our platform hence increasing the quality of labor and the ability to earn more hence reducing poverty.

According to a study conducted by Upwork a large freelancing provider, over 57 million Americans were freelancing in 2019, and as the trends continues more than half will be freelancing in the future.

Some of these workers are full-time freelancers; others are still holding done a 9-5 job, but doing side hustles in their free time. The growth and proliferation of such part-time and freelance work has given birth to a new kind of labor market: The Gig economy.

Freelancer is an independent contractor self-employed individual who offers services to clients. These services are offered to businesses via sharing economy platforms like taskrabbit, MechanicalTurk Et al. Some of the freelancing opportunities include; Accounting, graphic design, marketing, project management, web design/development, writing and editing.

From the above, it is evident that this technology works, and closer home Kuhustle's platform have handled jobs worth $920K with a potential to scale to the region and continent.

Marginalized youth across the developing world lack access to "decent jobs" depriving them off living a dignified life of rights and social security. Access to decent jobs ensure youth fully participate in social, economic and political life and compellingly gives them a choice an alternative choice to live a life of dignity.

Finding meaningful work is not a panacea to this issue, It also requires behavior and attitude change in regards to work. Training on core-life skills to impact skills on personal development, personal finance, communication and leadership goes along way in building and creating confidence to face future challenges.

Furthermore, training on vocational and entrepreneurship skills will ignite and shift their mindset to creating opportunities for themselves. Critical to this, is digital skills to enable them access digital work. Talent is equal but opportunity is not therefore, this gives them the leverage to access global opportunities that were not available to them.

Out training on soft and hard skills and providing a platform where they can access digital-age work bridges the gap to impact millions that would have other wise have no opportunity to access and exploit these resources. On completing training they will be skilled on the specific training areas, and confident to start their business with the right knowledge and those seeking employment will have the confidence to look for digital-age work and get assistance on placements with companies for internships/and or "decent work".

Those willing and eager to start their businesses will not only be supported to Ideate and start their businesses but will also get training on how to crowdfund and provided with a platform to run the crowdfunding campaigns.

In the long run we will have confident employable youth who are skilled to take up jobs, establishing and running successful businesses and able to access online jobs leading to a socially, economically and politically empowered youth.

The solution has grown over the years since it was established currently, it  serves over Thirty two thousand freelancers in Kenya. By the end of the year 2020 we have a goal to serve Fifty Thousand people.

In regards to training we are looking to impact 500 youth in core life skills training and over 50 businesses supported and funded through crowdfunding.

In five years we want to provide jobs to have a presence in the East African region serving over Two hundred Thousand as freelancers on the platform and having trained 5000 Youth to either start their businesses or gained internship placement/ or "decent work".

We have a grand mission to connect clients to Africa's remote talent and be the leading provider of digital online experts. Our goal is to be a leader in the region in terms of providing access to consistent online jobs and serving over Two hundred Thousand Freelancers in the region in the next year.

In regards to training we plan to have trained over 5000 marginalized youth to either have internship/or decent jobs and have started and running the businesses successfully. In addition we plan to have help set up over 1000 businesses through running crowdfunding campaigns.

To achieve this mission we will need to partner with other organizations. We need talent to push this vision, we need expert advise on how to make the training model sustainable on the long run and create this huge impact we also need funding to scale and create impact.

Finance has been a challenge to accomplishing some of our goals; One, the challenge of on boarding skilled freelancers who require on boarding training to be able to give quality work and doing an outreach to attract new freelancers and more clients to the platform to meet the rising number of on the supply side.

The same also affected training, which is time(6 months) and resources bound to ensure we attract and reach the target age group and also expand to other town and Countries in the region.

Technical

We have been relying on a third-party crowdfunding platforms that have been plagued by delays in payment, and exorbitant charges.

The Covid-19 pandemic is also limiting our impact on training  and going we are looking for ways to overcome this.

Financing

We intend to over to attract more freelancers to the platform by reaching out to and focusing on Universities and TVEt's to make awareness campaigns on the opportunities. To accomplish this, we will approach the administrations of this Institutions to help in sharing these opportunities. We  will also employ aggressive use of social media assets to reach out to them and even sponsor some postings.

We also intend to use the same strategy to advertise more and create awareness to businesses on the value of using the platform. We are looking at funding opportunities to be able to support and continue with our youth training on Employ ability and Entrepreneurship.

Technical

Working on building our own crowdfunding platform to improve crowdfunding experience.

The pandemic has brought a halt to our training plans as we observe social distancing and work from home policies put in place by Governments around the world. We are looking at how we can leverage on technology to continue with the training by building a site where they can access learning resources.

The solution team Kuhustle is part of Nailab Accelerator Ltd. Nailab accelerator Ltd is an Incubator and Accelerator for startups with a vision of providing knowledge and opportunities across the continent.

Kuhustle was incubate and funded by Nailab Accelerator Ltd and is based at the Nailab co-working space. Nailab does training on soft and hard skills and Kuhustle provides the platform for some of the trainees to access online jobs.

The solution team at Kuhustle is comprised of The CEO, CTO, the project manager, the Program manager training and the projects Assistant. Five in total.

The team is headed by Sam Gichuru who is the founder and CEO of the Organization in 2010. He is also an alumni of YC F3 and is also the founder of Kuhustle.

Billy Odero is the CTO and co-founder. Billy is a software engineer with over 10 years of professional experience building a wide range of technologies. He has worked with Python/Django, ReactJS, JavaScript, Java and has experience developing reliable and scalable web technologies.

Waweru Murimi, Project Manager/Customer Experience Officer. Waweru’s primary role is to execute the marketing strategy and ensure that there’s sufficient supply of job postings as well as professionals with technical skills and expertise required to deliver quality projects and on time.

Alice Michira, Program Manager in Charge of Training with over 15 years in Project management coordinating leadership development programs for young people in Africa.

Robert Akoko has over 10years experience in Administration and Project management. He is currently the project lead Nailab Accelerator Ltd.

Kuhustle has partnered with Nailab Accelerator Ltd in Kenya, to fill the gap mainly in training. Nailab is an incubator and Accelerator with experience in training startups.

The goal of Kuhustle is to be the leading freelance market place in Africa and the one stop shop for providing marginal communities to online work through  training.

The partnership is critical in sourcing, training and on-boarding youth. In addition, the cooperation provides the much needed mentor-ship to the youth as they transition from unemployment.

We are serving the population between the ages of 18-35(freelancers) with training so that; one, they are able to take up online opportunities(digital-age work), where lacking, we upskill them to be able to give quality work and start earning. The skills range from web and mobile application development, UX/UI designers, repair and technical support, tutoring and lessons, accounting, transcription services, business consulting to photography and marketing. The model has impacted over 20,000 individuals already.

Secondly, we provide Individuals and organizations looking to hire skilled professionals and affordable services a platform to do so and in the process offer value. The clients are able to get quality work, without having to spend time on vetting because we have a pool of vetted experts on our platform.

We provide a market place for both the clients and freelancers through our platform and charge subscription to freelancers for sustainability. However, on employability and entrepreneurship training we rely on funding(grants and donations) to be able to implement the program as we look for ways of making it sustainable.

The Kuhustle platform charges subscription fees to our over 32 thousand freelancers. These fees are sufficient for running our operations and conducting training on our platform to on-board freelancers.

We are certainly on a growth curve and selling our services will be able to help us in achieving the impact and sustainability however this will take long doing it organically. Funding to expand our services and training will give us the much needed impetus to reach sustainability and create more impact.

In that regard, we are looking for donations and grants to expand, and we will be able to onboard more businesses, Individuals and freelancers which translates to more revenue hence sustainability, and at the same time training more people to give them opportunities to join the work force and knowledge, and funding to start their own businesses.

We are applying to solve, so that we are in a position to continue working with the youth from marginalized communities. We have done some considerable job but finances are holding us back from continuing and expanding our work and hasten our path to sustainability.

With funding we will be able to reach out to more youth from marginalized communities and on-board more and get them ready to take advantage of online jobs.

On training we will be able to reach more youth, and train them both on employability and entrepreneurship skills so that they can either join the work force or start their businesses and lift themselves out of poverty.

Kuhustle's goal is to grow into a formidable brand when it comes to freelancers marketplace in the region and the larger continent. To achieve this growth we need support in the areas of funding to be able to spread our wings in the region recruit talent and the exposure and backing that comes with partners support.

In our growth plan it will take us time to impact more organically, and attain the brand recognition that we want to become. Also, advice on the revenue model specifically for the training bit which is still reliant on grants and donations to be sustainable is very important on our path to becoming fully sustainable.

We would like to partner with the following solve members;SNHU Global Education and Kiron open and higher education  to advance and empower refugees to access basic and higher education as a stepping stone to vocational and higher training.

The region has many refugees escaping hunger, conflict and persecution in Somalia, South Sudan and providing them with access to global higher education put them on a path towards these jobs. The support will put them on our paths to complete the cycle and they will be able to start earning and live dignified lives.

Kuhustle platform facilitates skilled youth to  access global online jobs that giving them a chance to live a dignified and lift themselves out of poverty. While, talent may be equally spread around the world, access to online digital-age work is skewed towards High and Middle-income countries.

The platform ensures that this work is available and accessible to the marginalized communities. It does this through first of all availing this jobs on the platform, where they can be readily accessed and secondly it conducts training and on-boarding activities.

The training and on-boarding is to ensure that they have the right skill-set to be able to accomplish the online jobs, give out quality work and get paid for their services. This prize money will allow the team to expand the services to east Africa region and this will enable us to have country-focused expansion strategies on marketing and recruitment of both freelancers and clients and other technical and legal requirements that comes with growth.

The platform has the potential of touching, impacting millions by giving them access to the online opportunity while profitably addressing global challenges.