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Summers are in full swing and that old AC at home is probably out of gas, which you don’t know how to get serviced.
Right? Yeah! kahani ghar ghar ki.
What if you can just hire someone to do the job and choose from technicians based on his skills and rates? Sounds too good to be true? Maybe not, because this is the offering of a Lahore-based startup.
Supertasker.pk is an online marketplace that lets you outsource any task, from basic handyman work to something like getting an app developed.
How does it work? If you want something done, download the app, sign up as a poster with verified phone number and start uploading job ads while in order to register as a tasker, one has to upload CNIC picture and selfies for further verification along with details of payment channels.
For a tasker, the profile is quite similar to freelancing websites like Behance or Fiverr, with details such as the portfolio, skills and completion rate.
The poster puts an ad with title, description and budget on which different taskers can make offers, negotiate rates and the two can then make an agreement.
You can filter your search by rate, location and distance range and there’s an in-app chat as well where the concerned parties can connect. Once the deal is done and the job is being assigned to a given tasker, the poster has to choose a payment method from bank transfer, credit/debit card, JazzCash or cash-on-delivery (CoD).
If CoD is chosen, the payments are handled between the two parties post-task while for online channels, Supertasker is trying out an escrow model by charging the poster before the job and paying the tasker commission-adjusted sum after the task is completed successfully.
What if the work isn’t done properly? In that case, a dispute request can be registered which, if verified, will lead to a full fee refund.
Currently, Supertaser has some 70,000 total users registered who have posted over 19,000+ tasks since the launch and the app, though live across the country, is used mostly in the usual cities - Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad - with some activity coming in also from places like Gujranwala and Hyderabad.
CEO Abdul Wasay Waraich realised the need for such a portal when he was setting up his office. “We were in constant interactions with labourers and were facing delays and found this a gap which could be tapped on,” he recalls.
Soon after, he, along with Shahid Sajjad, founded Supertasker.pk, and commercially launched the startup in November 2018. Before this, Waraich was running CarButlers - a car wash startup - on which he made a small exit.
Supertasker has a simple business model: it’s free for posters to use but a 20 per cent commission is charged to the taskers for each job completed.
To cash in on the blue-collar market, the app also has an Urdu version available but Waraich has found its usage to be very limited and is instead planning to introduce Latin-scripted Urdu, which he thinks would have a far wider reach.
In a gig economy where tech is seeking to replace the middlemen, how good of an idea is it to bring in a commission-based model when a major player like OLX already bridges demand and supply without any charges?
“While OLX can be used for hiring, it still remains a classified website which is not best suited for this purpose. All it does is to connect the two parties, that too externally, with no accountability whatsoever. Whereas we are trying to bring in exactly that: accountability,” the CEO explains.
How? “We have a verification system when registering taskers and store their details so in case of a mishap, we can take some sort of action, be it blocking their account for future, or even facilitating state institutions in case of a robbery (God forbid). OLX doesn’t have any such checks and balances,” he adds.
But even within the narrower tech scene of (mostly) blue-collar hiring and odd jobs, Supertasker isn’t the only player. A number of entrants have tried to build a portal for flexible gigs, such as Sukoon.com or Mauqa.Online.
So how does Waraich and co differ from the rest? “Sukoon, as far as I know, used to have people on their payroll while Mauqa has fixed rates, with both offering a very limited range of predetermined services. Meanwhile, we give users the freedom to post whatever tasks they want to get done and negotiate the price between them.
It could be blue or white collar, physical or online or anything,” Waraich says.
The writer is member of staff:
Twitter: @MutaherKhan
Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2019
