OmniJobber - Uniting Skill with Opportunity

Improving the livelihood of small service providers by balancing demand and supply of ad-hoc services via digital efficiency.

On one side, getting employment in emerging countries such as Cameroon is laborious despite the abundance of skill and potential. So about 90% of the labour force is literally condemned in the informal sector constituted of petty jobs, self-employment. The main issue here is that the entire business set-up is disorganized, involving low order frequency and unsecured processes. This make it extremely difficult to earn a sustainable livelihood by trade of service.

On the other hand, individuals and businesses need to connect with a vetted handyman or service provider quickly and at affordable prices. Both service buyers and providers need to be assured about the safety and reliability of the interaction.

Our promising solution is a web platform designed to improve the financial livelihood of small service providers in sub-saharan Africa by facilitating their collaboration with service buyers. We are OmniJobber, the future of work in Africa and beyond. 

We believe that filling up free time, narrowing the gap between demand and supply of on-demand services and temporary jobs will offer access to quality labour force and promote employment.

OmniJobber provides an easier way to match buyers with the right worker, a bidding feature to support negotiations, an instant messaging feature for communication, a commercialisation feature for better market exposure of workers, and a secured way to make and receive payments.

It equally enables buyers to cut cost by outsourcing jobs to skilled individuals or companies at competitive prices.

OmniJobber is dedicated to promote employment and self-sustainability by increasing the probability of low income service providers to obtain deals. 

So far we have built a database of more than 100 vetted service providers (freelancers and businesses) by on-field hawking assisted by web registration. We are successfully linking up a great deal of clients to suitable service providers in Cameroon.

The aim is to help create a total of at least 100000 temporary jobs in Africa by 2025, and 1 million in the next 15 years. If you want to know how we intend to do this join us and support us in the remarkable adventure.

We aim to contribute to the global fight against unemployment and poverty, by facilitating business collaboration and making time become real money.

Our approach is much more practical as it includes beneficiaries with limited internet access. We merge online with offline operations to include most individuals and businesses for who we exist. These options include on-field registration, SMS and voice communication. The aim would be to enable users to trade services even with USSD codes.

Our model also includes unskilled workers with tasks requiring basic literacy and numeracy skills. We directly employ unlimited people on OmniJobber as digital commercials.

Our web and mobile solutions have transposed what works well offline into algorithms designed for effective exposure of workforce and easier collaboration. 

OmniJobber 2.0 embodies several unique features to disrupt the job market, as follows:

Digital hawking: This is an incorporated marketing system to ensure efficient market exposure of wotkers and constant flux of service requests. It is a technology aimed at including  “free” people with little or no technical marketable skill as to generate income for themselves.

Job rotation: The rotational algorithm aims at boosting worker’s enthusiasm and reducing skill loss by minimizing monopoly.

Multichannel payments: The platform enables security-driven acceptance of digital payments across multiple channels including mobile money payments.

Within a year we need to establish a good brand image – OmniJobber the platform with quality freelance workforce. 

OmniJobber has to collaborate with organisations working in similar lanes and contribute as a major actor in poverty reduction, job creation and life improvement in Cameroon.

Presently most workers are located in 3 major towns of Cameroon, Yaounde, Douala and Buea. Our aim within 12 months is to register about 2000 reliable workers spread all over the 10 regions of the national territory. 

We also in intend to cover buyers, all over these 10 region within this period.

The bigger picture is to help create 2 million temporary jobs for both skilled and unskilled Africans by 2025.

Africa is rich in a "free" skill pool, thus the next destination for global outsourcing. Expanding our processes and progressively updating our systems such that clients all over the world can collaborate with vetted freelance workforce in Africa is our target for the next 5 years.

OmniJobber has the potential to empower freelancers beyond Cameroon. Within 36 months we will include workers from other neighbouring African countries with almost the same demographics as Cameroon, for example Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal and Gabon.

A customer for OmniJobber is the one who adds up to the company's revenue. He/she can be a worker, who provides services or a buyer who requests a service. 

The major sources to accumulate workers and buyers include:

• Door-to-door registration and sales
• Social Media marketing
• Events, Seminars and Forums
• Word of Mouth
• SMS Marketing
• Video publicity (YouTube and Television)
• Digital hawking

In order to retain its users OmniJobber offers incentives to users in the form of discount for the regular buyers. We reduce commissions for the highly reliable workers. We also facilitate user account upgrade for productive users.

Our database is constituted of thousands of users in diverse domains with about 200 vetted workers who receive freelance jobs. We have handled more than 500 requests from buyers (individuals and companies). 

These users served in the feasibility study, market research and product development phases of our project. They enabled us fine tune our business model. Their remarks have greatly been taken into consideration for the development of the online platform and app.

With proper marketing we intend to penetrate Yaoundé, Douala, and Buea more, expecting to register about 3000 vetted workers, 1000 digital hawkers and assign about 12000 freelance jobs in the next 12 months.

The aim is to register about 120000 users (40000 workers, 20000 digital hawkers, 60000 buyers) in about 3 years.

Ghislain Takam, CEO. Co-founder MyAconnect, 2015 Runner-up for Africa innovation award at Anzisha, . 

Yves D. Moche, COO. More than 5 years experience in Project Management.

Frank Ngankam, the Chief Workforce Officer. Nothing best than having a HR specialist in a mission to promote employment. Co-founder MyAconnect

Geoffrey Fonga, CFO. Financial Analyst in Silicon Valley

Noel Kenfack, CTO. Certified full stack developer.

Mirabelle Enam, Advisor. Interpreter and Sworn Translator. CEO of GBUITS

OmniJobber mainly receives commissions from service providers upon every request from service buyers, namely individuals and businesses. For every successful job allocation OmniJobber charges the jobber 8-20% of the job fee. We rely on earned income and credit arrangements with users and lenders to finance our operations and to grow the business. Below are the main revenue generators for OmniJobber:

• Commissions (as mentioned above)
• User Membership upgrade (from Free to Basic, Intermediate, or Premium options)
• Sponsored posts and profiles
• Fees for advertising via our communication channels.
• Skills showcasing and job dating events
• Seminars and training
• Coworking space 

Being selected by Solve would greatly boost our brand image and visibility to potential users. A solid brand image coupled with the mentorship at Solve will give us an edge in partnership negotiations and lead generation.

In addition, the great network in the Solve community offers opportunities for quality learning, technical support and investment. These would improve the growth potential of the business.

Solve would give us tools and techniques to overcome these challenges:

Design and implement a deployment plan.

Sensitizing laggards who are skeptical about digital-based operations.

Securing seed funding to implement our marketing plan and vetting system targeting service buyers and quality jobbers.

Establishing key partnerships, locally and worldwide.