TERAWORK TALENT MARKETPLACE

One major problem faced by 50 percent of Africa working-age population is access to good work opportunities beyond their geographical location. Mostly at disadvantage are skilled women with nursing children, and talent living in rural areas, where jobs and training opportunities are difficult and costly to access.

We solve this problem by providing an online freelance marketplace where skilled/semi-skilled jobseekers in Africa have instant access to local and global job opportunities from anywhere at any time. The flexible work and digital delivery of service enable this community to work multiple gigs, earn decent income to live better lives.

We are the only freelance platform in Africa that support multiple currencies. This allows inclusion of the neglected community of Africa freelancers. 

With 15,000+ talent onboard, 6,000+ transactions done, 97% of which are 50 miles apart or more, we are well-positioned as a pathway to socio-economic development and unemployment alleviation in Africa.

Africa has a growing talent pool of young professionals. However, despite significant gains in education and skill levels, there have not been enough jobs created in all the regions to accommodate young people in search of work, reason most migrate to city in search of work.

Almost half of the 10 million graduates churned out of over 668 universities in Africa yearly do not get a job. (United Nations World Economy Briefing 2019). Equally, loads of naturally gifted, experienced skilled individuals without university education reside in rural areas across Africa countries serving customers digital services only within radius of 5 miles or less around them. 

Even with, our world increasingly becoming interconnected these young skilled and semi-skilled professionals have limited access to both local and global opportunities due to lack of online platforms within the Africa region with an end-to-end process for employing remote manpower in a flexible and safe manner.

TERAWORK creates an online talent marketplace that enables access to work opportunities on-demand in Africa and across the world. Skilled/semi-skilled jobseekers, independent professionals, etc signup and create impressive profiles showcasing their skillsets, experience, achievements, work history, reviews, ratings etc. On the other hand, prospective employers, mostly small to medium-sized enterprises with limited budgets, leverage these data to make informed decision about which talent to hire on-demand for their tasks or projects.

Hiring talent on TERAWORK can be completed within 2 hours, as against traditional hiring process that takes up to 6 weeks. We create a feature-packed end-to-end freelance platform that eliminate geographical barriers ensuring talent, regardless of their locations, can work with any employers, with both parties trusting working together remotely or on-site. With capabilities for employers to hire workforce only when needs arise, talent can work multiple gigs for different employers at the same time, thereby increasing their work and earning opportunities.

TERAWORK generates work opportunities for these talent through marketing awareness to 44million plus SMEs in Nigeria and is extending to over 200 million across Africa countries. 

Our marketplace platform is a 3-tiered web and mobile (launching in July 2021) apps that is fully built on AWS infrastructure.

In Africa, youth unemployment and underemployment rates remain very high, and a large share of working-age population, who are mostly youth, end up self-employed in vulnerable occupations or in the informal sector.

Our primary targets are about 5 million people with marketable skills in Nigeria and tens of millions across Africa countries willing to offer freelance services irrespective of their locations to earn decent income and live better lives.

Our unique ‘services as-a-product e-commerce’ model creates a level playing field for African talent especially those in remote areas and skilled mothers with nursing children to pursue their career aspirations with the opportunity of working from home. The flexible work time and digital delivery of service enable them to work anywhere at any time.

Since launch of our minimum viable product in 2018, we have constantly engaged our early adopters through our inbuilt feedback mechanism and their feedbacks have contributed immensely to the continuous improvement of our platform, to almost a product-market fit (PMF) we are attaining today.Notable additional features with impacts on users’ experience are as follow:

• In-App real-time messaging feature built to enable freelancers and employers chat, negotiate and collaborate in real-time. This has reduced the average time taken to consummate transactions by 90%
• Support for multiple currencies to include the neglected Africa workforce. We support Africa local currencies, and with this, Africa talent can access and compete in global job markets, from more clients in different regions paying in various currencies worldwide which increase their chance of getting more gigs. Currently, we support 14 currencies with 5 of them from African countries. We are attracting more active customers and have handled more transactions from employers beyond Nigeria on the account of this alone. Currencies are automatically suggested to talent and employers during signup based on the location from which they access our platform.

One major problem facing talented youth in Africa is access to good work opportunities beyond their geographical location. Disadvantaged youth living in remote areas often migrate to cities so they can compete for already scarce job opportunities.

We solve this problem by creating digital freelance talent marketplace that is providing skilled and semi-skilled jobseekers instant access to both local and global job markets, allowing Africa talent to earn income to live a better life without geographical barriers.

We are also driving positive social change for young women and people with disabilities with the opportunity of working from home.

TERAWORK has more than 15,000 vetted professional onboard with over 2,000 businesses paying for our services and enjoying it.  More than 6,000 freelance jobs have exchange hands between our freelancers and 97% of transactions of these transactions are consummated between a buyer and seller 50 miles apart or more. Over 60% of the orders are from the same buyers making repeated purchases from the same or another freelancer.

TERAWORK leverages technologies to create a digital platform enables talented youth access to work for employers within their vicinities and from anywhere worldwide from their same locations, which is impossible with traditional recruitment process. 

 Summarising, the following are the innovative approach we are taken:

• Compared with how jobseekers conventionally seek full-time formal sector jobs employment, TERAWORK makes employment process, which traditionally characterises with geographical barriers, something that can be accessed on the go connecting talent with opportunities beyond their location with the flexibility of working multiple gigs with “somewhat formal” entities eliminating or reducing geographical, informational, and administrative barriers
• Unlike competitions that only connect users, our robust search algorithm, real-time chat, secure online payments, project management tools for collaboration, post-work review system which enable businesses and professionals to rate each other, we ensure that employers only pay for services that are delivered based on agreed terms and conditions and talent get paid without delay for jobs they deliver successfully.

It is obvious the present approach to employment can't scale because of Africa high population. Freelance marketplace will definitely be a viable option. The flexibility will no doubt accommodate everyone in respective of location, age, gender or disability status.  TERAWORK comes with the offer of scale and the potential to accelerate regional and international service export, offering potential new opportunities, even in rural areas and also revealing trends in demand for skills.

TERAWORK currently has more than 15,000 vetted talents onboarded with over 2,000 businesses paying for our services and enjoying them. More than 6,000 freelance jobs have exchange hands between our freelancers and buyers, with 97% of transactions of these transactions are consummated between a buyer and seller 50 miles apart or more. 

In the next one year we aim to onboard 120,000 vetted professionals with over 100,000 active buyers to have ordered 250,000 + jobs. 

In the next five years, we will love to see freelancer talent on our platform reaching to be 3 million in numbers, earn billions of dollars helping millions of businesses of all sizes grow and achieve their goals. TERAWORK to grow into a company that has a real impact on the lives of millions of businesses and talents in Africa and around the world.

As a company we look at two key metrics for growth over time, number of repeat buyers and average spend per buyer over time.

Full-tme - 10

Part-time - 2

Contrator - 1

Our team is comprised of some of the best minds, and most passionate people in the industry. Although from varied backgrounds, our team shares the same vision and common values. Our team possesses a passion for technology, a devotion to our clients, and a dedication to ensuring the company’s growth and prosper. Also, our talent are our partners, and they share the same values with us, thus our clients experience consistent experience working directly with our freelancers or getting support from our in-house team.

Each in-house team member has extensive knowledge and experience in all aspects of software development. With more than 60 years of combined experience, our engineering and project management teams are second to none when it comes to techie related businesses. Our online platform, the TERAWORK freelance marketplace was built from the scratch by our in-house team and the platform competes favourably well with its global counterparts. Our Engineering department's reputation for providing agile and functioning applications (products) to our clients is key to the success of our company. Our Support and project management team ensures projects are delivered on time and with the highest possible level of quality.

TERAWORK has 3 co-founders one of which is a female and Chief Operating Officer of the company. 

Equally, employment into TERAWORK team is based purely on merit and without discrimination against race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, gender, religion, disability, age, ethnic origin etc. 

With support from Solve, we would increase our marketing awareness. We will continuously increase our marketing campaigns and awareness, both through digital, social media and offline channels to enable more talent and businesses discover us, use and benefit from our solution.

Continuous enhancement of our processes, platform, mobile apps, and continuous provision of free training courses for our freelancers are key to enable us better serve our new and existing users (businesses) and increase their number drastically. Solve financial support will go a long way helping us in this regard.

Beyond financial support, becoming a Solve finalist would give us access to some of the most intelligent minds within Solve community and beyond. In addition, Solve would provide priceless validation of our vision of connecting businesses with freelancers for work, would further attract and convert more established businesses.

We require supports in areas selected above to help us rapidly expand our brand awareness, reach out to acquire more users within the shortest possible time, who will benefit from our solution. 

Access to the entire Solve, MIT communities of intelligent minds for business mentoring, supports and resources that could help us add more values to our users, including free online trainings courses across variety of services we offer on our platform 

Oxford University: For freelancers training support

Google: For freelancers training support

Microsoft: For freelancers training support

Our solution addresses inclusion neglected skilled Africans living in rural areas where they lack opportunities to compete in local and global job opportunities and earn decent income working for businesses regardless of their location. 

In addition, we leverage on our partners to provide subsidized/free training courses aim to sharpen the skills on our disadvantaged talent. 

TERAWORK is driving positive social change for young women with the opportunity to flexibly work from home or remotely. On our online freelance platform female professionals can earn flexible income while caring for children and elderly family members if need be. TERAWORK is the platform for women who are seeking to express and acquire new skillsets, make money and conserve their time. Basically, working in the comfort of their homes and on their own terms.

TERAWORK flexibility, inclusiveness and innovation, represents an opportunity to reach women and youth seeking employment.

Already, TERAWORK in conjunction with Google Business Group, Lekki is sponsoring events targeted at women development in business. One of such recently is Women Will (Lekki) – A grow with Google Initiative, giving women equal access to information and opportunity.

Our impact has been felt in our local community. A commercial bank in Nigeria, Sterling Bank Plc’s ‘One Woman’ Award, celebrated our COO, a woman of course, alongside 5 other women nationwide in the International Women’s Day Celebration in February 2020, themed ‘Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value’. TERAWAORK was celebrated as company that strives to give equal opportunities to women. 

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TERAWORK would use Innovation for Women prize for the following

1.      To sponsor events and courses that promote women growth in skill and business.

2.      Develop and launch mobile apps so that access to the platform will be on the go

3.      Increase digital and offline marketing awareness targeting women within the identified age bracket