Connecting Feature Phone Users to the Digital Economy

Almost 40% of the total working population in third world countries like Bangladesh are actually blue-collar workers. A significant number of those workers are women & involved in the care giving segment. But the problem is 95% of these workers are not connected to the internet- either they don't have a smartphone or can not connect it to the internet.

Platform business is booming all over the world. Uber is creating millions of jobs, but as these caregivers don't have access to the internet, they are being left out of the platform inclusions & eventually financial inclusions.

Modern-day customers are also suffering to find the right caregivers for them as they don't have any platform like uber where they can hire a caregiver. 

So the main problem is DISCONNECTION. Not having access to the internet is preventing almost 40% working population from getting recognition, having their job dignified & excess to real-world financing! 

We are connecting any mobile phone to the internet. Whether it is a smartphone or a feature phone, Our technology can connect all in real-time. Our Caregivers call it- Computer APA. Apa means in Bengali, sister, and our abbreviation is Any Phone Automation.

So a caregiver who lives in a slum & she has a simple feature phone (button phone) is connected with our platform, HelloTask. When a customer places an order at our app, our technology generates a real-time IVR call in their local language and asks the caregiver whether she wants to accept the job or not. The caregiver literally talks with Computer Apa and takes things forward. 

At the user end, It's a complete uber-like solution. Users can see every little information that is extracted from the voice communication of our computer APA. 

So,

• HelloTask is an app- where customers can hire caregivers.
• Computer APA is also kind of a partner app/technology where our caregivers (partner) communicate through voice with an intelligent IVR instead of tapping a phone screen.

We are connecting all the blue-collar workers to our platform, including CareGivers. In Bangladesh, there are 10M domestic workers who are actually providing various kinds of caregiving services.

At HelloTask, they get to access:

• to the more extensive customer base
• free training with the help of INGO like OXFAM, BRAC (both are our partners & Gave us grants)
• financial Inclusion through Bkash
• recognition of their jobs (world bank, Bill & Melinda gates foundation are already partnered with us to find out collaboration opportunities)

In the best-case scenario, the workers we are bringing under our umbrella used to earn 26 cents an hour (researched by OXFAM). Most of the time, they were either unemployed or underpaid. They didn't have any weekly holidays at all. But at HelloTask, we have already increased their earnings to 5x, Making their job dignified; they all have the MFS account, they get 4 days of holiday a month & working on achieving more for the largest left out community in the workforce.

Being born in a very rural area in Bangladesh gives us the privilege of seeing their life (caregiver) from the front. My brother Mahmudul Hasan Likhon & I grew up with a commitment to do something for them. Almost 6 years ago, we decided to found HelloTask.

We were the only company back in 2017 working with blue-collar workers. The Journey was full of failure. We were getting enough orders from customers, but we didn't know how to connect these workers with them in real-time. We tried almost 25 operational models before inventing the computer APA, and none of them was scaleable. Seeing us get a lot of customers, nearly half a dozen companies formed back then in Bangladesh, and within two years, all of them either pivoted or shut the company down. The only problem was they also could not make the thing scaleable. 

But we survived 6 years, made scalable solutions, raised funds, placed 4,00,000 jobs so far and found our following ways to bring more people under digital inclusions. 

Our Journey is full of failure, but yes, that gave us the experience, expertise & confidence to take this thing forward.

After six years of bumpy journey, we finally have a scalable solution that can serve more caregivers and customers in different countries. Currently, we are operating in Bangladesh, but the biggest market in this South East Asia region is India. We want to expand to India, get to know their ecosystem better and have proper mentorship on scalability.

We made the solution that can scale, but it is not scaled yet. So our specific ask to Solve is: to help us go beyond Bangladesh by connecting relevant partners. 

We think the way Computer APA connects workers without having the internet is a very innovative solution. We are the only ones that eliminated manual mediators from the service industry by distributing the job directly to the workers in real-time.

Using Computer APA, 40% of the total working populations of third world countries can be connected to the digital inclusions and to the real economy that counts. 

This large number of workers were left out of any kind of calculations. They were entirely invisible. We are making them visible while building an industry. 

Within next Year: We want to give at least 50,000 workers access to financial independence. Currently, traditional workers earn 64 dollars a month in the best-case scenario. We want to bring jobs to them that pay at least 1 dollar per hour. So their monthly earnings would be more than 200 dollars. In the current scenario, this is a significant impact. 

Within the Next 5 years: We want to bring at least one million workers under the HelloTask umbrella, where they will get paid enough. This caregiving job will be broadly accepted by society as a dignified job. Digital wallet, access to finance for their health, education for their child and access to the next level of training is our priority in the product timeline. 

We are currently focused on measuring 4 elements of the impact we are creating. These are:

• Earning ( related to SDGs 1,2 & 8)
• Society Acceptance (related to SDGs 8,9 & 5)
• Financial Inclusions ( related to SDGs 8)
• Upskilling ratio (related to SDGs 4)

Find our theory of change here.

Our Core technology has been developed on PHP. For the Smart IVR part, we used the asterisk- an open-source communication platform & Google TTS as the voice of Computer APA.

We also have our dataset to train our AI on how our workers accept or reject a job. Our Mobile application is developed on flutter. 

HelloTask is a team of well-maintained diversifications. We have 1/3 representations of females on the board of directors so far. Almost half of the member of the team is also female. We also have representations from the people in the core team who are differently abled. But we believe still a long way to go to achieve the ideal representations. 

We take a flat 15% commission from every order. Our Unit economy is positive already.

We provide two types of services.

1. On-demand: pay per you go

2. Subscriptions: Monthly Payment 

We are more focused on selling subscriptions, and our customers & workers also love subscriptions.

Being the only provider in Bangladesh, we are kind of hot cake to the customers. We are always oversubscribed compared to the supply side. 

We are already generating a good amount of revenue. Our revenue contributes nearly 40% to our monthly burn. According to our financial projections, we will become self-sustainable once we hit the number of 75000 orders a month. Currently, we are providing 15000 orders monthly. 

We have raised our first VC fund from Startup Bangladesh Ltd (a fully govt owned VC in Bangladesh). We also raised grants from Oxfam, Brac & Roots of Impact. Accelerator Programs like Accelerating Asia also funded us a significant amount. More importantly, many known angel investors in Bangladesh invested in HelloTask too.

We are currently well funded for the next 18 months as we successfully just closed a pre-seed funding round.