Program: Nigeria Summer 2012
Handyman9ja is an application that seeks to find a solution to the problem of accessing and hiring reliable artisans and construction workers. Handyman9ja is designed to be operated on every available communication platform, such as: Smartphone application, website, SMS and soon phone call.
Our mission is to greatly change the "once-bitten,twice-shy" mindset most Nigerians have towards artisans and thus encourage professionalism amongst these artisans.
Gloves Incorporated comprises of a group of young innovative entrepreneurial minds with a drive for business development through technological innovation.
Our product, Handyman9ja seeks to find a solution to the problem of accessing reliable artisans, handymen and construction workers by offering an application which can be used to search for, hire and rate these artisans.
HANDYMAN9ja is a Smartphone application that allows its users search for, contact, hire and rate handymen and artisans. The user opens the app, selects the artisan category, location and job description, and then clicks on search. This returns a list of artisans that fit the users’ criteria. However, for the user to access their profiles, he has to sign up on the app. If he has already done that, he’s granted access to the profile pages of the artisans. Upon viewing their profiles, he then chooses based on ratings and after use rates that artisan based on the job done.
It’s a very simple app that affords the average person the opportunity to access rated and reliable artisans to execute any job.
Our online survey showed us that about 50% of our potential customers are willing to pay for this service out rightly, another 34% are willing to pay if it’s affordable and 16% are not willing to pay at all. Furthermore, artisans also responded to our questionnaires and 70% of them are willing to pay membership fees, 20% of them may pay if it’s affordable and 10% of them aren’t willing to pay. We thus presume that our product is feasible and is worth the technical and financial investment we require.
According to recent statistics from telecomsblog.com, about 44 million (approx. 26.67%) Nigerians use the internet and projections from marketresearch.com show that that Nigeria’s smartphone market will record compound annual growth rates above 30%, through 2014. Hence, even if our product is restricted to only smartphone users we’ll still gain access to about 5-10% of the total population. For the initial launch, during which we focus on Lagos, we estimate we’ll have a total reach of about 1.5 million residents (about an average of 300,000 households) within a space of three months by using the quintessential online and offline marketing strategies.
