In August 2020, Carina Juilfs founded Moho Home, a furniture startup bringing modern furniture to Ugandan sitting rooms and office spaces. Just like any business owner, she needed to hire some employees. Typically, she would advertise, sift through the applications and then zero down on some candidates to conduct in-person interviews before deciding on the best fit. To say it mildly, this process is time-consuming and costs significant resources. But then, Carina found another way, the Flip Africa way.
“Flip Africa has a wide database of talent ranging from junior to senior employees. When I need to hire one, I just post a job on my Flip employer’s account, and then they send me a list of prospective employees.” Carina told me when I visited her office in Bukoto. “From the list of talent, I can see the reviews of these employees, past work experience and capabilities then decide on one. So I don’t have to advertise or sift through CVs and applications.”
Carina’s testimony is one that has been experienced by the over 400 employers that now use Flip Africa to source any talent. Flip Africa is the brainchild of Abu Musuuza and Neha Pandya. The Jobtech startup was started in 2018 and is a digital freelance marketplace that connects young people to employment opportunities in micro and small enterprises. The starting point of FLIP Africa was a convergence of two different paths of the founders, but for Abu, the inspiration was close to home.
“In a typical African family, we all have someone who despite getting educated never found a full-time job and that happened to me with one of my elder brothers. And we are always quick to judge these people, which I was guilty of.” Abu tells me. “But I learnt that the system simply doesn’t provide these opportunities. After university, every graduate has about a 15% chance of actually being hired. And this got me thinking a lot.”
But this research was not enough for Abu. He decided to dig deeper. “As much as the statistics show that 85% of young people are unemployed, we started rethinking what unemployment meant in this context. But we learnt that 85% was productive, but this wasn’t recorded.”
Abu realized that there were many young people that were employed in the gig economy, and this needed to be tabulated. Not even their earnings were recorded. So all this experience was not tracked despite being very important in the job market. Surprisingly, there was demand for the skills the young people possessed and it was more of a question of how to connect them.
He decided to team up with Neha. Neha was easily sold on Flip Africa. Neha had been in Uganda since 2009 and has worked for an NGO International Law Institute for 10 years. While working there, she noticed something. “We were a small team, but we regularly got young people coming to the office with no appointments and with CVs in hand. They would ask to see the CEO and it was clear they wanted to try their luck at getting a job. This is what opened my eyes to the employment problem.”
Neha, passionate about young people, considered bridging the gap between school and employment. “These young people were smart, but you could tell they weren’t ready to work. They struggled with articulating what they could offer the company”. So when Abu invited her to join him, she was sold even though she was sceptical about the legalities of the gig industry.
Neha and Abu wanted to disrupt the status quo. They decided to build a gig platform. At first, Neha pushed back because of her legal background. “I thought the gig economy was really messy, illegal and had so much exploitation. It was a monstrosity. I wanted to prepare people for work instead which was the easy solution.” Neha tells me. “But I recognised that what Abu wanted to do was disruptive, and if we wanted to solve an actual problem, then we had to do something radical. We realized that 85% of young people were excluded from formal employment, but many worked in the gig economy. We didn’t want t to create a solution for just the 15% who could get a job”
The result of their iteration became Flip Africa. Flip Africa is a platform that matches professionals with employers. On their platform, professionals can create a profile that shows their CV, work experience and academic qualifications. They are also given ratings based on the kind of work they have delivered. On the other hand, employers can also set up their profiles, and post available short-term jobs where they will be matched with professionals. But the platform goes a step further.
“Businesses can interview, generate employment contracts and pay the professionals all in the platform. Then the professionals’ earnings, reviews and testimonials are recorded in the app. This data is important for the professional going forward, and also the employer when making employment decisions on the platform.”
The data collection is part of Flip Africa’s efforts to be more than just a platform that connects professionals to employment, and it is what has set them apart from other job tech platforms. “Many job tech platforms in Africa focus on white-collar jobs, but our niche is the gig economy. We also provide that comprehensive 360 experience to our users including managing their finances and overall career development. Before a professional begins their work, the employer deposits the money in the e-wallet on our platform. We hold this money until the professional wraps up the work. This is also how we make money. We take a 10% commission off each contract done on our platform. We send the remaining 90% to the professional. It is not just connecting you to a job and that is it like other job tech platforms”
Flip Africa’s approach has attracted over 4,000 professionals. “A typical profile of our professionals is young university graduates with minimal experience. And surprisingly, we have typically had an almost 50/50 split of male and female professionals.” The platform also has 270 employers including for-profit businesses like Fairway Hotel and Endiro Coffee as well as non-profits like ReliefLine Uganda and Care International among others. They have also facilitated over 600 contracts.
Neha and Abu have built a very purpose-driven company that is passionate about the success of young people in the employment market. This purpose has not been exhibited with the Flip Africa platform, but also offline where they have a campaign called “Dress for Success”. In this campaign, the Flip Africa team has collected suits and office dresses that anyone can borrow when going for an interview or for their first month on the job before salary kicks in. “I saw this while growing up in the USA and I imported it here. We have had so many people donating clothes, and those who need them can use them for a month and return them. We didn’t want people failing in the job market because of simple things.”