ZIADA

Service on-demand platform Kazi helps consumers find trusted businesses and service providers in their vicinity and increases visibility for business owners.

Kazi connects skilled and casual informal workers with jobs on-demand and provides them with access to business advisory and financial services such as digital payments and tools leasing.

The startup was also part of the 9th cohort selected by Catalyst Fund.

In a recent chat with Annabel Angwenyi, we learnt how the platform is making it easier for consumers to find the best match for the jobs they need to be done.

Annabel alongside the other co-founder has been a small business owner since leaving university and have faced first-hand frustrations of running an SME in Kenya.

The trigger, was when they needed their mechanic for a vehicle service who wasn’t available. The situation became dire and they knew that there was someone with the right skills to bail them out, however, there was no way for either of them to match the process.

From that point, the situations that were similar to the mechanic one became more and more apparent across service sectors.

That was when they both decided to create a platform that was to offer this visibility and matching for service providers with clients actively seeking their services.

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Overview of Kazi

According to the founders, the app has a simple outlook as service providers can sign-up and set up up to 3 service offerings on their profiles.

Clients then open the app, select the corresponding category for their needs and the Kazi platform will load a map with the providers around them.

For services that aren’t location-sensitive, they can filter the results and look through the list to find the best match.

All the client has to do then is click a button requesting a service.

Basically, Kazi can be deployed to put your business on the map and at the fingertips of real customers.

With Kazi, users enjoy the following according to its website:

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1. All in one

No need for several apps, you can get all the service providers you want via the app.

    2. Free of charge

Consumers and Level 1 service providers can sign up and get full use of the app at no cost.

    3. Transparent

Rate and review the service providers and help other users know who best to engage for a task.

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Challenges and milestones

As explained by Annabel, Kazi’s App first iteration in 2017 didn’t take off, however, they were able to confirm with that version was the market need and the few users they had at that time really campaigned for Kazi to come back when the co-founders went on a break.

The second version was launched in July 2020 at the height of the pandemic and since then have recorded 17,000 downloads with almost 6,000 service providers and 3,000 job matches according to the co-founders.

“Most of this has been organic growth due to financial constraints but it has worked in our favour as this approach really allows us to listed to user feedback and gives us liberty to improve with a lot more intent.”, 

Funding for this stage remains a struggle but we are seeing improved reception as our traction is now speaking for us.

The informal sector is paramount to the GDP of all Sub-Saharan countries and we are very purposeful about being part of the start-ups looking to create positive impact in this space.

We were therefore very happy to be selected to the Google For Startups SDG program with our focus being goal 8 that is about decent work and economic growth.,

Annabel sees Kazi increasing its reach across Kenya as 20% of its service providers are outside urban areas across Kenya.

“Our goal is to listen to our users and meet them at their points of need.”, she adds.

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Bottom line

Annabel also spoke about her Founder Institute experience, stating how she has benefited from the accelerator program several seminars.