COG

PROBLEMS:

• Skill gap of skilled trade Nigerian workers due to supply-demand issues. 
• Low productivity of workers despite high distribution of employment statistics.
• Low penetration of technology application in industry.
• Solve employment and compensation problems for Nigerian youth.
• Aging of skilled trade workers and low appeal for new entrants due to stereotypes,leading to low transfer of already inadequate skills to the younger generation. Employers also hire older people because of experience.
• Lack of structure in this sector. Now, recent developments due to a  law has made hiring unlicensed engineers as a punishable offence to phase out unskilled labour,hence providing a large void to be filled.

SOLUTIONS

• A community of workers that are grounded in both practical and theoretical knowledge.
• Hands on approach on the training of Nigerian youth through collaborations.
• Pay structure that includes healthcare cover and retirement plan.
• An app that connects the trained workers to customers.

NIGERIA

• 33.3% of 80.2m labour force are unemployed
• 42% of youth are unemployed.
• 55% youth un(der)employment.
• 8.4m of youth are completely unengaged.
• Graduates and post-graduates make up unemployment numbers.
• 28.8m have informal jobs.Of this,6.29m never attended school, while 22.5m never attended tertiary education
• >30% of graduates are unemployed.Nigeria produces at least 500,000 graduates yearly, but at least 150,000 are unemployed.

Global

• Korn Ferry states that there would be a global skilled trade shortage of about 85.2m people in 2030 as tech cannot deliver promised productivity gains without right skilled workforce.
• The biggest economies have skilled trade shortages as top 2 problem to drive infrastructural development and maintenance.
• A 2018 report found that trades positions were found to be the hardest to fill globally and in the US for the 6th year in a row.(Trends.co)
•  For every person that enters the workforce,5 retires.
• In manufacturing alone,32% of $bn companies estimate a $100m+ loss over the next 5 years as baby boomers are attracted to other sectors.
• BuildForce Canada estimates that 200,000 construction services worker in Canada (1/4 of workforce) would retire in 10 years. Hence, the government immigration policies to attract skilled workers.
• Most missing technical skills: Tradeskills(31%), STEM(18%).(SHRM)

Our MVP connects vetted and licensed skilled trades-workers with their clients who need their services for facilities installation, maintenance and repair services. We have managed to build a unique product that vertically integrates for a large fragmented market that has a low Net promoter score. These sectors are:

1.  Building and construction services
2. Energy, power and mechanics
3. Automotive maintenance services (workshop and on-road services)
4. ICT hardware services
5. Wellness/environment services

Service providers under the Council for the regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, or trained by Lagos Energy Academy, Peugeot Automobile Nigeria Learning Centre and Railway Technical Institute are recruited as freelancers, like the Uber model, and assigned to tasks based on competence focus, proximity to task and availability. The technicians are supported by materials distributors and accessories supplier for quality assurance reasons. Through this, individuals and businesses can outsource those services to us on the web. Contractors can request for technicians for site operations.

The next step is to build an app that allows the clients to onboard all their assets for monitoring/preventive maintenance scheduling, purchase insurance, request for asset pre-purchase technical inspection, and paid asset analytics. Therefore, the clients would to recognize our brand as a part of their lives.

As an blue-collar services firm, our goal is to improve the services culture in Africa. The state of Nigeria’s infrastructure  is worse than it was four decades ago. To do this, the client demand is simply quality of output and affordability. Our goal is to construct a hypothesis in such a way that satisfies that demand. We have identified the major ways to do this:

1. Human capital development: The human factor in infrastructure development and maintenance cannot be neglected. Sadly, this is the major supply problem that technology cannot solve. At first, the right conditions and structure must be put in place to attract young people into these professions before developing them. That is why we want to improve the professionalism and stereotype attached to these jobs by adding retirement benefits, healthcare insurance and a good compensation. Our platform is structured such that every job has a fixed price/scope that factors all these benefits including a great wage. We aim to help the average Nigerian STEM graduate understand that they do not need a corporate job for success. With good training as field service technicians (vetted independent contractors) and increased client demand on the platform, they can compete on benefits with the average corporate worker or better, considering the pay of the other group. Our partners would handle training and licensing while we handle market access.
2. Practical technology focus: Our aim is to compete not just in services, but develop solutions that helps the freelancers and the service requesters get better value.To begin, we would leverage Amatrol’s e-learning system to expose new trainees to their trades. Also, the vision, combined with human capital development, is to focus on research and development that brings market solution to life. Just like Apple builds engineering hubs, we would build a knowledge management hub that is focused on solutions for those four sectors.
3. Opportunities (job) creation and client satisfaction: This is our current focus. We are a liaison startup at the intersection of opportunities creation for technicians/suppliers and the satisfaction of clients. On the client side, market research affirms that almost every household/individual/business would need those services at least once in a month. We are marketing our product to the B2B partners like the association of estate surveyors, a 6000 member strong professional network, whose members need services at least once in a week for the properties that they manage. Our product disrupts facilities management although with a focus on the technical but broad aspect only. In fact, we’ve gotten requests from retail users and agreements with some corporate users. While our product cuts across every demography and business type, we have been invited to the conference of that association as a partner to market directly to its members to aid our market presence.
4. Community: A community of young skilled professionals who have a singular identity and voice on grass root issues as a bloc would foster prosperity and development. Different people who train and work different trades in infrastructure development and maintenance, with a brand tailored to appeal to the emotions of the average young African. Various CSRs to improve societal conditions would be made available through COG. Generally, as with all supply-demand problems, we understand that technology cannot solve the foundational problem. However, our vision to solve the basic problems would make rewards more enormous when complemented with technology for efficiency thereafter. Effectively, COG becomes the money-making venture with the lowest entry barrier for young people, just like every developed or dynamic developing country has a venture that is a mass employer of its working age group.

Our problem, solution and target population are aligned to the challenge goals. With funding on the supply end, our partners would train STEM graduates into these professions and set them up as small businesses while we represent them digitally to get requests. Then, our solution provides jobs and structure for financial planning that features retirement benefits and healthcare insurance. Our target population is young Nigerian STEM graduates who would improve infrastructure services after they are empowered to get  training in trade professions. COG is an option for those who need to take charge of the African future as a community.

Expansion to UK, US and Canada

The UK and Canada may not have a training problem, unlike Africa, but however, it has a numbers problem. Canada has refocused its immigration policy on tapping skilled workers from other countries to address the shortage. Truth be told, we expect that we would lose some trainees post-graduation to these two countries. However, we are open to training skilled workers in Nigeria and getting them absorbed by a branch in Canada, US and UK. This is another way of motivating workers.

The flow would be:

Complete trainingè complete 4 years of work in Nigeriaèget transferred to UK and Canadian branch (optional)

A lot of service providers in Nigeria are offline and are focused on just one trade. We have not entirely found product-market fit but we have acquired partners for training, partners for services and a go-to market strategy that goes beyond just requesting for services. Our closeness with engineering partners gives a competitive advantage as nobody has a similar product medium, network and approach. We have developed an MVP that has a direct value proposition to the users.  We get requests daily from phone requests and our prototype approach of using trades people who belong to the engineering ecosystem gives us capacity to deploy easily based on competence, availability and proximity.

COG is a product to the service providers and a product-service combination for the service requesters. A lot of service providers in Nigeria are offline and are focused on just one trade. Once a service provider gets registered/licensed by COG, they are open to opportunities, unlike being independent where their engagements are dependent on customer loyalty/trust, job availability and their bargaining power .To spur our mission for job creation, we use the freelancing and outsourcing models based on client demands. This means that some clients prefer to have service providers on a per-scope basis or full-time outsourcing. We have acquired partners for training, partners for services and a go-to market channel beyond just requesting for services.

 After onboarding 69 service providers, we understand service providers have a minimum price but final costs are usually based on perception of the client which now backs our price reasoning and unique in this market. The financial plan we introduced to provide benefits like health insurance and pension that they do not have as independent contractors, for social equity. 

We have bundled services together for clients to subscribe to a package. E.g. a client could purchase a service package for car, HVAC, generator servicing for a discounted price. We also plan on insurance sales and analytics.

Our business is to connect this service requests and delegate them to closest service providers we have acquired. Rather, than been a skill register, this operational approach improves the UX of search and services request.

A website and an app. Our website has a diagnostic tool and multimedia upload function where users can state exactly what they want down to the core details, so we pass that information tot the service provider for execution. This allows the service provider to get a proper understanding of what is required. With funding, we would leverage Amatrol’s e-learning library to simulate trade training. Our app would also have a machine learning feature for analytics.

Go Mechanic raised a $100m from Tiger Global Management to connect users to a network of auto workshops and expand to emerging economies. We have built a network of 7 workshops and several freelance FSEs for on-road services in 3 states in Nigeria, and have spent less than $100 on development with no marketing expenses. This is just for automobile maintenance and repair and we have built a network of trades’ people. We also have a verbal agreement with an industry client who would use our product and refer to other real estate managers in Lagos.  With funding, we would deploy more capital to training, tools purchase for local areas, marketing and app development (design is on-going). We would be able to develop market research in Ghana and Nairobi. 

Data and Privacy: Our app would require asset data and location, client email and bank details for payment

Currently, we serve 69 freelancers, 10 materials suppliers and 7 auto workshops across 31 trades. When funded we can recommend 50 STEM graduates yearly on a contract for subsidized training with our partners, and get them licensed by the COREN. They would pay for this phase either pre-training or in installments when they start market placement. The reason for this we need to be self-sustainable while making the freelancers understand the lifetime opportunity. During placements, they would need tools for their professions. The tools would be owned by the company but available at various pick up locations for a zone when tasks are assigned to freelancers in that zone.

 In five years, we want to have a hub just like the International Union of Operating Engineers in the US and Canada, where training is done in-situ for trades using modern technology from Amatrol (we have gotten a $600k proposal from them) and other training partners. This would give us a capacity to expand to strategic cities in Nigeria and Africa with a COG training license and a service request channel from job, the freelancer is always on a job delivering quality infrastructure/facilities development, maintenance and repair services.

Our goal for the next six months is to improve our operational process and marketing. This is key to providing a future for our freelancers who would be trained through the nurtured partnerships. Market positioning as a company that provides great affordable services is important. Cross side network effects from having demand would convince more prospective freelancers to consider accepting our approach as they would be convinced they would always have tasks, hence, convincing them to go through the training and operational procedure would be easier. The strategy for the supply side is straightforward, but it would need the demand side to drive action through tool acquisition, operational procedure fit and marketing.

• Number of technicians acquired and trained per year (access to affordable technical education for youth and subsequent employment)
• Amount processed from client services per month and year (achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors)
• Number of requests per month and year (Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic product, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in least developed countries)
• Number of retail users served per month and year
• Number of corporate users served per month and year
• Number of cities present ( substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training)
• Number of suppliers

• Full time: 3
• Part time: 2
• Contract: 4

Our team is made up of people with experience in engineering for domain experience, technology for product, and business for operations and business development. Having the second vice president of NAEC and secretary of NATE as a founding team member gives us access to industry networks  into all locality in Nigeria. In fact, he was responsible for helping us get access to a very unique ecosystem of licensed workers and for future trainee licensing. Same for our VP of auto services, as his experience in the industry helped us with operational procedure and business model refinement in auto services. We get access to spare parts and IP from Peugeot, as well as subsidized training from PAN LC.

Tobi comes with strategy and product development as he brought in all partners just from a sole idea and created the website and app features. He’s also an incoming Msc Innovation and Entrepreneurship student at Esade Business School, a top 3 program and top 25 business school in the world. Having deferred last year, he has an advisor from school that has an Msc in Civil Engineering Technology from KU Leuven.

The Operations manager is an ex-banking frontline operations executive at a top 4 Nigerian bank albeit with an engineering background.

While our core team is made up just one female member, we can owe that to the structure of the job as trades and its administration is male dominated. Also, the wellness service includes nail techs, make-up artists, home cleansers, hair services which are dominated by women. Our members come from diverse parts of Nigeria and an European (an adviser). As we grow, we are looking forward to hire more women as employees.

• Refine business and revenue model for market success.
• Developed social media marketing and business development to reach new clients and partners
• Provide technical support in operations

• Mentor and advise on product development and strategy/operations planning
• Support marketing and communications to infrastructure developers in Africa get market presence
• Get access to investors and grantors for fundraising
• Purchase data for use

• International Union of Operating Engineers in Canada and US: They operate in a similar way but only for infrastructure development training and site operations contracting.
• MIT Engineering Faculty and Incubators for future science and technology activities planning
• Amatrol: We have met them previously to provide technical apparatus for trades, and they gave us $601,474.13 quote to provide an internationally recognized certificate, training system and technical support.
• Apple and Samsung: To become the official repair service provider in Nigeria, as there is none currently. These two companies dominate phone purchase among young Nigerians and having an official relationship would enable us capture that market. We could even develop a merchandise sales partnership with them.
• Partners contribution: OEMs like Mikano, JMG, Toyota, Hyundai, HP, Ford, BMW, Range Rover, Mercedes Benz, Honda, Volkwagen, KIA, Nissan for spare parts and data sales.
• Nigerian Federal Ministries of Housing, Works and Power for low scale contract outsourcing.
• USAID and UKAID: These organizations fund infrastructural projects in Nigeria/Africa. We would like to partner with them as a projects site execution partner.