Early 2012, I met my co-founder, Temitayo. From there, we launched Jobs in Nigeria, which at the time was one of the biggest job hubs in Nigeria, we had over 200,000 members in over eighteen countries in Africa, it was a big deal for me, using technology to help people find jobs around them. Before then, some friends were always asking me to help them find jobs online and they would go through a lot of websites trying to find a suitable job. It was stressful and hard having to browse many websites for a job, apply and still not get a job. Tayo and I had the same dream, same passion, we built JIN and started in 2012.

The same year, we got into Co-Creation Hub, we had an academy where we were taught about startups, entrepreneurship, and many others, it was really a very good experience for us then, having founded Jobs in Nigeria.

We learned a lot of things about execution, building technologies and skills, and those things helped us a lot during our time at JIN. Still, I like to make an impact, and working at BudgIT is another one. BudgIT simplifies government data for ordinary citizens to understand, and technology plays a huge role in this because if you want to reach people and also want to simplify data, there are two sides to it. There are people who are on the internet and tech savvy, another are those who prefer the traditional way of doing things, am talking about those who prefer newspaper and stuff. It’s also possible we have people in these two segments.

So at BudgIT, we have been doing a lot of publications to reach out to those set of people who prefer the traditional media or not too tech savvy and also, build websites and apps for the set of people that are tech savvy and online to help them simplify and understand government data.

We have also built some civic tools like Find a Cop, PICC, Tracka and many others. We have also organized some major tech hackathons in Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra leone. These are tech areas I’m involved in with a team of three other tech wizards and many project managers.

Long after my JIN days, I still felt that the service market was grossly underserved and that a local solution would be needed to solve the jobs market so, I started Findworka in May 2016. Findworka helps you find skilled people, artisans, and workers and today, we have over a thousand workers and businesses on our platform.

Is Findworka like a crowdsourcing website whereby people just come and they need something done; is it a place where you find a full-time employment?

Yes, it depends on how you see it because any opportunity is an opportunity whether it’s full-time or project based especially in this ecosystem where people are largely looking for developers and designers. I would say it’s a task and services marketplace where any project or task you want to do or want to have done can be done, you can just come into the platform and submit the project/task and you would have people who are interested in doing it for you, you guys connect that way and they start working on your project; you pay them and everybody is happy.

I understand that you’re into service. How do you get people to come and use your platform, artisans and the likes, even employers, how do you get them to use the platform?

I like to work with data and from the artisan perspective, I don’t want to assume that they are not online. We realize that they are also online because not everybody that graduated from a particular university is doing a white collar job, some people have gone out there to start their own businesses, some are auto mechanics, painters etc and they are learned, they know how to use the internet. I understand that a majority of them do not but then we have quite a good percentage of them that know how to use tech and for that reason, we can’t just cut out the problem, we just need to find a way to make them know how to use the platform. For example, When Facebook came, nobody taught anybody how to use the platform. We don’t want to make the assumption that the market is not there, we have confirmed the market is there, and it’s just about how we simplify the platform so that they can all understand how to use it. Since we have launched, we have had a pool of people submitting their data on this platform and also getting opportunities.

The goal is to simplify the whole process. For the employer, finding skilled and trusted professionals is a bit difficult, and the skilled professionals want a job and those in jobs want to commercialize their spare time for additional income. Many of them are not yet aware of our platform, but we’ve already started building relationships with various communities and also doing some online marketing to help us reach more people.

So essentially it is easier to get people looking for job than to get those who would provide the job or service.

Yes.

Do you have any form of incentives to the employers, do they pay?

At this stage, we don’t charge the employers which is because we need them, a lot of them. They are the job providers and we need to have them come in and drop their projects or jobs for free. What we also do is to try to explain the benefits to them, make them understand that it is totally free except for the fact that you have to pay upfront the amount the service provider has billed you. The platform also exposes them to a lot of talent.

Is there a way you protect both parties, and how do you also make money off it, except if it is a charity organization

How we provide securities for the employee is that we make sure that the employers pay 100% upfront into our escrow account; the service provider having known this, would get to work and then once job is complete and delivered, we can then release the money to the service provider. Our revenue model is 15% commission on every transaction through the platform.

But in some conditions where the service providers need an upfront to start with, we have a facility to help them get the consent of the employer to approve the upfront. For the employers, we have a user rating system that allows them to confirm verified service providers and also helps them make decisions based on the service provider’s past works and account details.

So far, how much has passed through the system, or how much transaction have you got?

We started in May, we’ve had over 135 transactions and we are happy about that. We have clients in Lagos and also in Abuja using the platform. We have online and offline categories of work.

We currently do not receive money through the platform for offline work but we’re working on a new model for that. As for the digital jobs, everything happens on Findworka. Payments are made to our escrow account and money is later transferred to the service provider after completion of work. It is that simple.