Q

MICHAEL WHELEHAN, CARLY JACK AND SIMON TELIAN,

CO-FOUNDERS OF BOUNTLY

What inspired you to launch your task-based

platform, Bountly?

Considering the future of South Africa, we realised that youth

unemployment (and unemployment in general) is a massive issue

in our country. Bountly came about as an idea to try to bridge

that gap in the market, to provide a solution on a short-term

or permanent basis. People looking for a secondary or primary

income, traveling individuals seeking to make a part-time living,

people looking to gain work experience, full-time mothers looking

for part-time work, underprivileged individuals looking to build a

solid band of recommendations to prove themselves, and so on,

can connect with other individuals looking to attain these services,

via our online platform.

Can you give some examples of the type of services/

opportunities that would work well with Bountly?

We have identified that the highest volumes of outsourced work

in South Africa right now are: transport, administration, handyman,

electrical, plumbing, catering, eventing, and tutoring. We want to

expand on these categories and encourage our users to reach out

and post tasks with whatever they need help with: Stringing up your

Christmas lights around the house, surf lessons, personal shopping,

hiring a chef for a dinner party, hiring a local tour guide, hiring a

"Beer Runner" for the rugby. Think outside of the box; people are

so multi-talented in SA and we want to showcase this. We want

Bountly to be the one-stop shop to get things done!

Can you describe a challenge you've experienced in

your business journey so far, and how you overcame

it/are overcoming it?

We have an overwhelming number of service providers ready and

willing to complete tasks; right now we are looking to balance

our supply and demand by appealing to the correct channels and

getting more people to post tasks on our platform. We suspect

once we have received our funding and developed our app, the

Bountly service will be more readily accessible. The second obstacle

we have encountered is the cost of mobile data. People in the

informal sector that we are trying to reach out to and be able to

help are struggling with the fact that mobile data is so expensive,

and this prevents them from wanting to load our website. We

are hoping to find a way of having a large service provider like

Vodacom or Cell C allocate reduced data for our site, in order to

help our cause of helping South Africans gain employment.

What are some of the risks associated with using this

kind of platform and what provision have you made

to combat these?

Trust and security are major risks for South Africans on a daily basis.

Our collaboration with a leading identity management system hopes

to rule these fears out. Once a user has been through the four-phase

verification process (social media, mobile number, FICA documents,

police clearance), they will receive a blue verification tick on our

system. This indicates that they will be hired before someone who

does not have this, so it is in our user's best interest to go through

the process of obtaining this certification.

Bountly.co launched in Cape Town first and has recently launched in Johannesburg.

Simon Telian

Carly Jack

Michael Whelehan