Good Jobs & Inclusive Entrepreneurship
Tamo Junto
A free, mobile-friendly online platform that helps Brazilian low-income microentrepreneurs develop their business
One-line solution summary:
Tamo Junto it`s a free, mobile-friendly online platform that helps Brazilian low-income microentrepreneurs to develop their business.
Pitch your solution.
Small entrepreneurs represent 98% of the Brazilian corporate ecosystem. 50% of them do not finish high school or college and 71% are at the informal market. Most of them are women, black, and started their business by necessity. Tamo Junto means “We are together”, and it’s an online and free platform, to support micro-entrepreneurs to develop their entrepreneurial and soft skills in order to help them develop their micro-businesses and improve their access to a decent life. Before the pandemic, we had 30 thousand users and a conclusion rate of 23,5% of our online courses. With the pandemic, our numbers of users have double, the microentrepreneurs were directly affected and in need of free support to build resilience during this time. It proves to be an excellent solution since international organizations are reaching us out to bring the solution to their countries since the onsite training are cancelled.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Our impact resides at the 8th Global Goal: Decent Work and Economic Growth: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. Our actions are aligned with target number 8.3: PROMOTE POLICIES TO SUPPORT JOB CREATION AND GROWING ENTERPRISES - Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services. Today, we have offer trainings to 65.500 Brazilian micro-entrepreneurs directly, and offering free content to more 65.000 subscribers in our Youtube Channel and by empowering them with the knowledge and skills they need to formalize their businesses, professionalize themselves and have more income, we support them to have a better quality of life for them and their families. We are present in all states of Brazil. During the pandemic, our tool is being used more than ever, and because it simple, we are working on licenses to offer to organizations in other countries that need to support low income microentrepreneurs in communities, like countries in Africa and Latin America.
What is your solution?
Our strategy is to provide an online space that shortened the distance between low-income micro-entrepreneurs and the knowledge they need to make their business a decent work for them and an income source for their families, helping to reduce inequality in Brazil. We do that through free, easy-to-access videos, where our beneficiaries learn how to price and market their goods and services, manage their finances, and formalize their businesses for increased efficiency. We are the first Brazilian platform that makes content that the low-income micro-entrepreneur gets, in the right language. All the other Brazilian websites and blogs that support entrepreneurs are language addressed to highly educated people and focuses on formal startups and tech solutions (too technical language and sometimes they charge for it), reinforcing the low-income micro-entrepreneurs exclusion from this ecosystem. Our content is free for entrepreneurs.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Tamo Junto’s main target is the Brazilian small entrepreneurs and the biggest need of the Brazilian small entrepreneurs is the financial health of their business and lack of formal education of the micro-entrepreneurs. We empower each small business owner by providing them with the knowledge and the tools they need to make their business a success, and a source of income for their families. We are not just a platform with knowledge, we are an empowerment tool. We show them how powerful and important they are and how small changes can push them to thrive. As the COVID-19 crisis hit Brazil, the informal low-income microentrepreneurs were heavily affected with sales going down to zero. They do not have emergency savings and don’t know the real financial situation to make a contingency or where to get microcredit, they have few digital skills and difficulty using platforms such as Mercado Livre, iFood, UberEats, and delivery process and some are no longer able to act in this situation, eg. beauty salon, machine shop, services in general.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Enable small and new businesses, especially in untapped communities, to prosper and create good jobs through access to capital, networks, and technologyExplain how the problem, your solution, and your solution’s target population relate to the Challenge and your selected dimension.
Tamo Junto offers support to low-income microentrepreneurs in Brazil that need help to survive the pandemic and to build resilience during this time, to be digitally included, and to make their business a reliable source of income for their families. That’s why our solution is directly aligned to this challenge because we are a technology-based solution that contributes to include microentrepreneurs in the economy.
Who is the primary delegate for your solution?
Luísa Bonin
What is your solution’s stage of development?
Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growthIn what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Curitiba, PR, BrasilIf you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technologyDescribe what makes your solution innovative.
Tamo Junto – We are together - is a born tech solution to support the Brazilian low-income micro-entrepreneur. As a spin-off of Aliança Empreendedora work on the web, all the technology we create and improve is design to attend the needs that low-income micro-entrepreneurs have through the website. We innovate being the first Brazilian platform tailored to the micro-entrepreneur: our UX Design, our language, our courses, everything we do is done by using the internet to communicate with them, and using the internet, the technology, and content to educate them. As an online tool, we prove to be more efficient to support larger groups of micro-entrepreneur with less investment.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
We launched the platform in Nov/2014, a first version that today we understand as a beta version, with just free quality content and a business diagnostic. In April 2016, running the platform for 15 months, we reached 3820 microentrepreneurs, 109.360 views on our Youtube channel with 577.900 minutes of content viewed. At that time, we measure our progress by the website analytics data and users’ comments. Exploring the data, we decide that to scale, we would need to improve our technology, offering courses with a certificate, guided content for them specific needs, and better user experience for the micro-entrepreneurs. So we build other simple technology, our website is built on Wordpress, and is very simple to manage internally, also easy to navigate. A lot of people are very impressed by how easy it is to navigate.
We consider our audiovisual also a technology because since we started to film the contents we need to develop a methodology that talks to our target audience. Today we have a studio in the house and our content is cool, engaging, and fun, as well as help the micro-entrepreneurs, learn what they need.
Provide evidence that this technology works.
People go to the website, chose a course, login for free, enroll a course, or see a free video, article or download some tools, is very easy and I invite you to login: www.tamojunto.org.br In five years, we have more tha 65 thousand users at the platform, 65 thousand subscribers in our Youtube Channel and a conclusion rate of 23,5% of our online free courses.
We ran a research with users that finished one of our massive online open courses: “Modo On”, and the results are:
Tax of micro-entrepreneurs that started a business after the course 81%.
Business formalization after the course: 83%.
Perception of income growth – 44%.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
What is your theory of change?
Impacts:
Microentrepreneurs raising their standard of living
Funders making more assertive investment decisions in terms of impact
Decision makers causing greater impactsMore efficient, stronger and more collaborative micro-entrepreneur support ecosystem
Results (long term):
Microentrepreneurs thriving from the growth of their businessFunders convinced of the importance of investing in systemic impactMore and better public policies that favor microentrepreneurs
Results (short term):
Micro entrepreneurs with developed "entrepreneurial profile"Strengthened and sustainable enterprises
Products:
Online courses
- Onlive video classes
- Online tools
Target:
Low-income microentrepreneurs
Interventions: Online trainings
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?
today: 65 thousand
1 tear: 120 thousand
5 years: 1 million
What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?
Today: 65 thousand, 1 year: 120 thousand
5 years: 1 million
Our growth will be possible by following the actions below: 1. Strengthen our digital marketing strategy, including Google Adword Grants that we are currently in the applying process;1.2. Create more content on our Youtube Channel. Our channel has a lot of subscribers and can be also a source font if we strategically place it as a Media Opportunity to brands;
1.3. Make our content accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities;
2. As a winner of SOLVE, we would invest the prize in structure and team development to create more content and tools that would be communicated broadly, both online and offline channels to inspire the micro-entrepreneurs to subscribe at the platform, finished a course, and tell their story to their peers. Today, the word entrepreneur still doesn't resonate with the low-income ones. Most of them do not see themselves as one, and part of the job of helping them to look for support to succeed is to create and spread more role models for them to follow.
By engaging in these actions and investing the prize in this strategy, we sure will be able to support 120.000 low-income microentrepreneurs in one year to have a decent work and life for them and their families and to promote the development of the local economy. It is important to point out that when a micro-business succeed, the community around them is positively impacted and this effect creates a broader impact in the community.
What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year and in the next five years?
We base our financial targeting private partnerships with companies that include micro-entrepreneurs in their value chain or impact them as a consumer target. So the crisis are already affecting our funsraising plans, so the biggest challenge will be to continue to have partners to fund our team and content production.
How do you plan to overcome these barriers?
To show how important our work is to rebuild the local economies, and try to get donations from people. Basically with fundraising marketing.
What type of organization is your solution team?
NonprofitIf you selected Other, please explain here.
I’ve co-founded Tamo Junto while working in our mother organization Aliança Empreendedora, a Brazilian NGO that supports low-income microentrepreneurs. Tamo Junto is a project of Aliança Empreendedora: www.aliancaempreendedora.org.br
How many people work on your solution team?
1 full time and 23 part -time - we have 1 employee just to Tamo Junto, but all the other 23 employess create content to the platform.
I am responsible for Tamo Junto fundraising and Aliança Empreendedora's fundraising.
How many years have you worked on your solution?
7
Why are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Our background is in marketing, technology social development, business managment.
What organizations do you currently partner with, if any? How are you working with them?
Today we have 2 active Tamo Junto partners: Izettle - fund an online course to suport microentrepreneurs to overcome and innovate during this crisis, and with Fundação casas Bahia, funded a course, but also we made a selective process with them to distribuite an emergency donation of 500 BRL to 2000 women microentrepreneur in São Paulo and Rio, and to get acess to the fund they need to finished the course.
What is your business model?
Our content is free for entrepreneurs. We base our financial plan joining forces with Aliança Empreendedora, targeting private partnerships with companies that include micro-entrepreneurs in their value chain or impact them as a consumer target. We will be free forever for the micro-entrepreneur, and as such, as more as we scale, we became more attractive to brands, and more partnerships with brands enable us to support more micro-entrepreneurs for free. Our client is the low income microentrepreneur and we provide online trainings for them to develop their small businesses.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, or to other organizations?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)What is your path to financial sustainability?
Today we rely on corporate partnerships, and we are currently working on raising investment capital, due to the potential of the platform to monetize the contents with brands. It's a challenge for us. Today we still depend on Aliança Empreendedora's structure.
Why are you applying to Solve?
Brazil is a continental country where small entrepreneurs represent 98% of the Brazilian corporate ecosystem. 50% of them do not finish high school or college and 71% are on are informal. Most of them are women, black, and started their business by necessity. They are a massive population and most of them have web access, so, I co-founded “We are together”, an online and free platform, in Nov/2014 to support micro-entrepreneurs to develop their entrepreneurial and soft skills in order to help them develop their micro-businesses and improve their access to a decent life for them and their families. Since then, we have 65 thousand users at the platform, 65 thousand subscribers in our Youtube Channel and a conclusion rate of 23,5% of our online courses an we are being essencial in the covid pandemic. After years of tests and technology improvements, today we have the tool and the right educational approach to help them to rise, and the grant can quickly push us to our goal, which is to support 1 millionlow-income microentrepreneurs through the platform by 2025.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?
Any organization interested in Brazil and Latin america development by supporting local communities to include their low-income microentrepreneurs.
Please explain in more detail here.
Our biggest problem today is funding. We offer our services for free because our beneficiaries cannot pay, but partbers can help us to innovate and think about monetize to scale and also the other big challenge for us is marketing.
Solution Team
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Luisa Bonin Co-founder of Tamo Junto, Aliança Empreendedora
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Mayara Paiva dos Santos Communication assistant of Tamo Junto, Aliança Empreendedora
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Solution Name:
Tamo Junto