• Home
• /
• Tech
• /
• Business

Geeks empowering the gig economy

HI-TRAC
The author's shorthand for Happiness Index, Infrastructure, Talent, Regulations, Access and Capital. The six pillars that make UAE a great place for a startup. This week's article is about the regional Talent and Access.
 
McKinsey Global Institute's report Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy, finds that up to 162 million people in Europe and the United States - or 20 to 30 per cent of the working-age population - engage in some form of independent work.
The gig economy
So what exactly is the 'gig economy?' Investopedia says: "In a gig economy, temporary, flexible jobs are commonplace and companies tend toward hiring independent contractors and freelancers instead of full-time employees. A gig economy undermines the traditional economy of full-time workers who rarely change positions and instead focus on a lifetime career."
Intuit estimates that by 2020, a full 40 per cent of the US workforce will be participating in the gig economy. An in-the-face example of the power of the gig economy is the staggering number of over 80,000 car-sharing service drivers in Mumbai alone.
Setting the stage
Cut to the Middle East. Bar some pockets and river valleys, agriculture and industry of the kind that is more common place in other parts of the world is difficult to sustain. At the same time, the region has a youth bulge and a tradition of high literacy. Resourcefulness is a hallmark of the people from the region. This is reflected in the remarkable ability to conceptualise and build, both in physical as well as virtual forms. The pyramids of Egypt, the great Semitic traditions and the development of mathematics and literature all point to this resourcefulness and intellectual capacity.
Mousa Yassin, CEO, and Fathi Al Sharif, CTO, are co-founders of Geeks (www.geeks.ae) and have leveraged that ability to abstract value. Yassin is a Palestinian who grew up in Dubai. As a teenager, he moved to Jordan. His years in school were marked by a deep passion for video games. He attributes much of his ability to think conceptually and his understanding of technology to that world. A long stint at PwC enabled him to develop his skills in process methodology with a focus on supply chain. This was a key reason for being hired by BP. A few years later, he found himself wondering how much more he could take of repetitious corporate work although the money was extremely good. Al Sharif, on the other hand, has an extensive IT background. He started writing his first application at the age of 12, was recognised as a Microsoft Certified Professional at the age of 14, as well as the youngest in Jordan to become a Microsoft Certified Service Developer at the age of 16. He studied software engineering and artificial intelligence in the UK after which he worked for Microsoft for 5 years.
The opportunity
Both believed that fulfilment was achievable early in life through entrepreneurship. Despite being initially critical of Al Sharif's concept of a laptop and mobile business, Yassin did some number crunching and realised just how big as well as truly broken the market for maintenance and repair of personal digital hardware technology really is. At one end of the spectrum are the opaque and expensive services of brand service outlets and at the other end is an array of small independent repair shops with limited resources and a patchy reputation. A market ready for disruption.
The company
Think of 'uberising' device repair. That's what Geeks started of as. Customers sign on and request repair or support services. These requests get routed to independent specialists called Geeks. This happens via algorithms that look at several factors that include the type of device, the Geeks skill set and rating, proximity and time required. The Geeks earn on commission. Customer satisfaction is sought to be achieved through transparency, timeliness and value pricing. Customer acquisition is based on targeted digital marketing and word-of-mouth. A drive for high repeat ratios on the back of good performance as well as upsells/cross-sells and referrals are the basis for transaction growth which in turn leads to revenue maximisation. To achieve this, Geeks seeks to take a fully customer-centric approach coupled with process automation at every step.

The platform, algorithms and transparency that were developed for the consumer business were ideal for taking Geeks in to the world of corporate IT support services. Businesses get access to a personalised portal that monitors their infrastructure and grants than access to remote, online monitoring and support. The objective is to effectively mitigate the high costs of local support staff and infrastructure. Pre-emptive actions as well as updated centralised technology help ensuring that businesses are well supported. The quality and complexity demands of the business segment are much higher than the B2C world but the rewards are commensurately better. 
Evolution
This abstraction has helped Yassin and Al Sharif to understand the potential for evolution of the platform. Starting from a consumer repair and support marketplace, the platform evolved to a remotely managed B2B model. At the same time, in the B2C space, it allows for the development of local talent-pools in each market that it is implemented. Further, the founders see the capability of the platform to expand beyond the IT use-case into other areas of maintenance and service including home repair. At a further level, the integration of payment services as well as smart-contracts into the value chain is a possibility. The company is in its bridge round till Series A funding. It is based out of Dtec in the Dubai Silicon Oasis, home to a number of exciting startups.
This space - the development of scalable platforms to support the gig economy - is one to watch.
The writer is founding partner at BridgeDFS, a bespoke digital financial services advisory firm (www.bridgeto.us). Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy. He can be contacted at sanjiv@bridgeto.us.