MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Our Solution

Mintor Whatsapp Training & Job Matching

One-line solution summary:

Chat-based AI tech platform for skills training and job matching, empowering millions right within their favourite chat app.

Pitch your solution.

With global youth unemployment at 70 million prior to Covid19, the negative impact on global economy cannot be ignored!

Youth need opportunities, but can’t obtain and prove their skills in order to be recognised for their potential and hence be given a chance. Yet, businesses struggle to find the right talent.

Mintor solves this by bringing skills training in reach of the majority, right within their existing WhatsApp chat: Through a simple chat with Mintor’s conversational Artificial Intelligence automated chatbot, jobseekers complete training courses, receive skills endorsements and get matched with right-fit job opportunities. Businesses deliver training, and are supported in making quality recruitment decisions, at a fraction of the normal cost and time.

Our scalable tech-enabled platform has proven to reduce training and job application costs by two thirds and improve job retention of youth by 70%, resulting in economic stability of marginalised youth’s families, and sustainable business growth.

Film your elevator pitch.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Increase and leverage the participation of underserved communities in India and Indonesia — especially women, low-income, and remote groups — in the creation, development, and deployment of new technologies, jobs, and industries

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Cape Town, South Africa

Is your solution working in India and/or Indonesia?

My solution is being deployed or has plans to deploy in both India and Indonesia

What specific problem are you solving in India and/or Indonesia?

The global COVID crisis accelerated the pace of remote work and training programs significantly. Subsequently the internet has given the digitally connected a bounty of resources, from do-it-yourself crafts (DIY) or tutorial videos, to learning to grow your business in a few easy steps. However what if you happen to be from India’s marginalised communities and do not have access to the internet? Despite having the second largest online market in the world India, 50% of India’s population still lacks adequate access to computers, internet and phone data. Hence marginalised communities once again are even further left behind with the acceleration of these digital work and training trends and simply don’t have access to affordable training to attain the skills they need to get jobs and flourish at work.

Astonishingly 5 billion people globally have access to mobile messaging. Since 2015, our team has focussed on devising tech-driven innovations that solve employability and upskilling issues of under-served communities, and subsequently evolved into the world’s first chat-based community impact solution for the digitally disconnected.

Our chat-based approach has proven its impact and scalability in South Africa and Indonesia and given the similarity in challenges in India we believe the same could be achieved there: over 20 thousand youth from marginalised communities in South Africa received job-preparation training and CV support, within just one month, completely chatbot facilitated on whatsapp with no human intervention; rural women all over Indonesia received business skills training via whatsapp as part of Cimory’s employee development program.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

People from underserved and remote communities, especially women and youth.

With the vast majority of India and Indonesia's population coming from rural and marginalized communities, they lack the money and physical access to acquire new-world-of-work skills. It is estimated that at least a third of these skills are basic-level and could be self-taught. Mintor brings the learning platform to these people, right where they are at, enabling them to do training courses chat-by-chat on the chat App that is the largest penetration globally, i.e. Whatsapp.

Furthermore, individuals register their skills on a job platform via whatsapp, and businesses can then easily search and leverage a matching algorithm to find the right-fit talent, no matter where they are. Now people from low-income and remote communities are finally being given a chance in life.

Mintor has been working for 7 years with these target groups, and co-developed the 4 year old chat-based platform with focus groups representing these audiences.

We have since supported over 100,000 people with job-readiness training and support tools, and matching with right-fit jobs.

Mintor develops regional-tailored solutions in partnership with local employers, local governments, training entities or non-profits, in order to ensure that the solution is adapted to the local people’s needs. As part of the process, workshops are held with representatives from our target audiences, and they are engaged in the solution testing and feedback phases.

How does the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge?

“The pandemic has accelerated the urgent need to bridge the skills gap by upskilling the existing workforce to meet industry demands and preparing the next generation of workers with the skills required to participate in the digitally-driven economy of the future.”

People from marginalised communities lack career support, finance and networks to access new-world-skills and job opportunities. Businesses lack cost-efficient mechanisms to source and screen for the right-fit talent.

Mintor bridges the barriers for both youth and businesses through our chat-based skills and employment platform. We enable these communities to gain new in-demand skills right where they are at, leveraging the chat-app that they already use. Our AI-driven chatbot facilitates these processes automatically with minimal human intervention, hence the solution is highly scalable and can support millions of people simultaneously.

As a result, businesses find right-fit talent for their new types of jobs and jobseekers are given the chance to prove themselves. Recruits are 70% more likely to remain in their jobs as a result of the quality-fit matching.

Impact: Job seekers access living wages and obtain financial security. In addition businesses grow through access to new-world-skills, and hence also create Net new jobs.

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Leànne Viviers

More About Your Solution

If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:

www.gomintor.com

If you have additional video content that explains your solution, upload it here (e.g., demo video, promotional video):

Which of the following categories best describes your solution?

A new application of an existing technology

What makes your solution innovative?

Tech Innovation: leveraging existing tech (chat-apps) for a different purpose (training & job-seeker support).

Through extensive work in youth employment in South Africa (among 3 countries with highest youth unemployment worldwide), we realised that there is a huge digital and behavioural disconnect between the 7 million unemployed youth and business recruiters. We sought a solution with no barrier to adopt to millions in terms of cost, effort or behaviour. Hence our Mintbot was born based on the realisation that youth spend their very little money only on what matters to them most, i.e. their social connectivity through chat apps, and therefore we decided to meet them there.

From the business’ perspective, we took traditional HR recruitment and training and turned it upside down - jobseekers/workers no longer come to employers, employers meet jobseekers/workers where they are at, i.e. in their social media chats.

Describe the core technology that powers your solution.

The Mintor Tech Platform is at the core a chatbot (Mintbot), integrated with the most dominant chat app’s e.g. WhatsApp on the one hand, and Organisations’ existing systems on the other hand. We leverage a stack of tech components to cost effectively run the integrated platform, with the chatbot logic and AI-driven processes bearing the largest part of our asset value.

The Mintbot engine can plug into any chat platform, and hence easily adapt to regional behaviours anywhere globally for immediate adoption by youth without the need to download a separate app or access a web-platform. Mintbot is integrated with our in house developed jobsite where businesses post jobs, receive applicants and connect with their shortlists, however Mintbot can integrate with any other training, HR or recruitment platforms as well.

Please select all the technologies currently used in your solution:

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
Behavioral Technology
Crowd Sourced Service / Social Networks
Software and Mobile Applications

What is your theory of change?

Activities:

Underserved community economic empowerment: Youth receive support to become more employable through whatsapp skills training and job applications.

Businesses grow through quality-fit inclusive recruitment and training of workers from rural, remote and marginalised communities.

Output: Many more youth are supported with career guidance [Mintor results: 70,000 in 4 yrs]; More Businesses consider youth recruitment due to the cost-efficient and quality matching mechanism. [Mintor Results: Businesses save 2/3rd on cost and 9/10ths of usual time]

Outcome: Many more youth are employed; Businesses find the talent they need. [Mintor results: 80% of interviewees are selected vs industry standard of 20%]

Impact: Many more youth are retained in the jobs and progress with their careers; Businesses grow as a result of value-add talent. [Mintor results: 85% of youth are retained within the 1st yr vs industry standard of 50%]

Long-term outcomes:

- Business: are encouraged by the evidence that youth with the right-fit potential contribute value to the business and are worth the investment. Hence they are more likely to create more job opportunities for youth.

- Youth: are informed and inspired by the career support provided, understanding the gap between their skills and the opportunities in reach, and the guidance on how to develop the skills to get there. Hence they are more likely to invest time in their own self-development and are more likely to add value to the businesses that employ them, and thereby contribute to business and economic growth while attaining economic self-sufficiency.

Select the key characteristics of your target population.

Women & Girls
Children & Adolescents
Rural
Poor
Low-Income
Minorities & Previously Excluded Populations
Persons with Disabilities

In which countries do you currently operate?

Indonesia
South Africa

In which countries will you be operating within the next year?

Brazil
India
Indonesia
Kenya
South Africa

What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?

Impact Measurement: number of people served with training, recruitment and HR support.

Next year: 1 million people served

Next five years: 10 million people served

We scale through multi-national organizations and partners that have access to large number of companies that deliver training and HR services to marginalized communities globally. Our technology has proven to facilitate scale, hence the main activity to scale remains marketing and market expansion. We also operate through re-sellers who receive commission based remuneration, as well as sales agents.

How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?

Our goal in the next 5 years is to have impacted the lives of 10 million underserved people across at least 10 countries, leveraging chat-based technology for skills development and employment related support.

Within 2022, we will be scaling internationally, replicating our South African model. We already scaled to Indonesia in the last year, and plans to enter Kenya and Brazil are well under way.

With a tech-frame that can be replicated anywhere globally, and together with partners in local countries that assist to localise the support to youth according to their regional needs, Mintor can easily scale.

The tech platform is implemented in local countries in partnership with local entities that have a deep reach and knowledge of working with the target groups and the business sector, eg Training institutions; Youth Development NGO’s; Business Development Service Providers.

The tech platform is managed and developed by the Mintor global unit in order for local countries to benefit from top tier international expertise on new tech developments e.g. AI matching algorithm; gamified skill assessment; mobile-chat facilitated learning for skills development.

What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year and in the next five years?

Since our offering is tech-based, we have very good monitoring mechanisms in place to track user uptake, engagement and outcomes via our platform stats and M&E follow-up questions to users to ascertain the impact on their lives as a result of having used our platform.

Main Indicators:

Number of users engaged
Number of training modules completed
Number of people that gained access to jobs
Number of people that remained in their jobs after one year

How do you plan to overcome these barriers?

Financial barrier: we require investment or grant funding in order to scale internationally. There is a steep initial setup and localisation cost when we enter new regions (eg for language translation, chatbot adaptation to local behaviours), and to subsequently raise sufficient market awareness to gain the traction and momentum required to achieve scale. Once we reach a certain level of scale, economies-of-scale kicks in and our unit cost drops significantly.

Business Market size: we serve a two-sided market, i.e. youth (with a huge size in terms of need for our support) and businesses that provide training and job opportunities to youth. The latter has severely been hit by Covid-19 and hence other avenues need to be sought to make it viable for businesses to create more entry-level opportunities.

More About Your Team

Your Model & Funding

Partnership & Growth Opportunities