Pangea, a Norwegian accelerator was recently launched in Kenyan. It followed this launch by selecting 11-African startups to participate in a 3-month accelerator programme. From the pool of 11, 3 (all from Kenya) were chosen to enjoy a grant of $50,000. Among the Kenyan startups that emerged winner was Onesha. Innovation-village had an exclusive interview with Bernard Momanyi Nyagaka, the Head of Business and Strategy at Onesha Kenya. Ngayaka spoke about being chosen to enjoy the Pangea largese, the future of Onesha and much more. Excerpts.
Can we meet you?
My name is Bernard Momanyi Nyagaka, I am the Head of Business and Strategy at Onesha Kenya, a 23-year-old born and raised in Kisii(Nyacheki to be specific) but learnt the hustling spirit in Nairobi(Just like everyone else).
Can you tell us about Onesha and what it has to offer Kenyans?
Onesha is an online marketplace where businesses get access to a pool of vetted, skilled and trusted top creative professionals in Africa at an affordable cost.
We seek to connect the best creatives in Africa with the opportunity on a global level, out initial target market is SMEs in Kenya in need of agency-level services which most businesses cannot afford. Big corporates are the ones that can afford to hire big agencies to handle all their creative work, most SMEs cannot afford these rates. To ensure we give businesses professionals who can deliver work on time, good quality and at an affordable rate, Onesha has a rigorous vetting process for any professional that seeks to join our network.
From what we have learnt from our customers, the most pressing problem that businesses face when hiring creatives is finding super skilled creatives with quick turnaround time on delivery. Onesha seeks to make this process seamless in the long-term by automating everything to bring efficiency into the ecosystem.
Our core focus categories include Graphic Design, SocialMedia Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Production and Web/Mobile design.
We currently have 700+ professionals that we work with serving over 30+ businesses a month.
What is the motivation for setting up Onesha?
Onesha started in 2015 when we got into the Safaricom Appwiz Challenge- that is where we got the Launchpad to build something that has an impact on the industry we chose to operate in.
The reason we built Onesha was to cut down the time spent by that entrepreneur looking for a designer to polish up his presentation for a client meeting, help that startup polish up his business profile to be at par with the competition, work with that business looking to make its products pop on social media using attractive visuals, partner with that company looking to launch a product to help build, document and distribute content on digital and help all these creatives doing this services get paid work.
How many designers do you have to call to get the perfect one for the job? What is the most efficient way to know rates without calling 10+ designers to get the most affordable one? What if you need someone to polish up your presentation with data for your meeting in 20 minutes?
If you are a small business with a small budget, how do we help you create an eye-catching campaign for your product without breaking the bank?
This is what Onesha is trying to fix, we have over 7million businesses in Africa facing these problems while on the other side, over 5million skilled creatives who don’t have frequent work. We seek to create the link between these two parties.
How will you describe the reception of Onesha by Kenyans so far?
We have been changing things since 2015 to find out which business model works best for us and how to scale that model. We strongly believe in the lean Start-up methodology, testing out different things to see what works and scales in the long-term.
Onesha was selected as one of the startups to receive funding from Pangea Accelerator. What do have to say about the this and what will the funds be used for?
We thank the Pangea Accelerator for selecting Onesha as an investee in their first cohort. The whole experience of having access to Europe’s best mentors in business strategy, product development and Market entry were overwhelming and exciting at the same time.
The funds will go to product development, build more avenues to access more jobs for our creatives and training workshops for our creatives to make them better in what they do as we plan for scale.
What are the challenges of running your startup in Kenya? Where do you see Onesha in the next five years?
Access to capital has been a key challenge. The cost of doing business in Kenya is still high given the high inflation rates. This means that for one to set up a fully running business in Nairobi, you need to have put together some good money enough to sustain you. Most young people who want to start businesses don’t even have this initial capital, main reason why 60% of them give up to look for jobs.
By end of next year, we should be available in Nigeria and by 2020 we should be in at least 3 more markets in Africa. In terms of businesses we serve, we are seeking to bring on-board international clients from The US and Europe by end of 2019 once we automate all our processes.
We seek to have 1.5million African creatives using Onesha by 2022 serving 1000 businesses a year on a global level.
The Kenyan startup space is one of the most vibrant in Africa. How did Kenya get to this point? Did government play any role in this march?
Outsourcing is just one dimension of a much more fundamental thing happening today in the world. What happened over the last [few] years is that there was a massive investment in technology, especially in the bubble era, when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables, all those things.
At the same time, computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of software-e-mail, search engines like Google, and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Nairobi, and one part to Lagos, making it easy for anyone to do remote development.
When all of these things suddenly came together around 2000, they “created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced, and put back together again-and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature.
And what you are seeing in Kenya and Africa today is the beginning of such an era, the rise of ICT powered solutions to deliver basic services within and outside Kenya. Cellulant serves the African market from the comfort of their offices in Westlands, Uber serves delivers over 1million rides in Kenya with the click of a button and Mpesa currently moves over $10m daily. My point, Onesha seeks to be the focal point where almost all creative work in Africa gets delivered, we are that ambitious
The Kenyan government has played a key role in accelerating the uptake of IT-powered solutions hence spinning off businesses which have created employment for IT students. The government has also given massive support to the private sector which has acted as a catalyst in how business is done in Kenya. The recently concluded Nairobi Innovation Week is an example of how government can work with universities and the private sector to give rise to a new era in Kenya of connecting with the global phenomena of the rise of startups as change makers of today and tomorrow.
What advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs?
Don’t do stuff just because other people are doing it, you will fail miserably. Do it because you really care about a pain point that you need to be solved, with or without funding, you will succeed if you do it long enough and learn along the way.
