Who, Where, When:
Founded in 2005 by young graduate fellows at Harvard University and the Arab-American University of Jenin (Palestine), Souktel is the Middle East’s first-ever mobile phone service that matches young people with jobs through a simple SMS software platform. Headquartered in North America and Ramallah, Palestine, Souktel helps change the lives of young people across the globe—providing its SMS JobMatch services to thousands of young job-seekers and hundreds of employers in the Middle East, North Africa, and East Africa. Souktel serves the majority of youth in emerging markets who have low Internet access, but high rates of mobile phone ownership.
Why:
Souktel addresses emerging markets’ need for a mechanism that reduces unemployment by helping young job-seekers find work: Currently, most youth in developing countries aren’t suffering from a lack of job opportunities—but from a lack of good resources to help them find where jobs are located: Most youth don’t have regular Internet access, few jobs are posted in the newspaper, and local governments have no resources to help youth find work.
What and How:
However, a huge number of youth have basic cell phone access, even in rural areas. Souktel has leveraged this technology to bridge job information gaps--by creating a first-ever mobile “JobMatch” service: From any phone, job-seekers create SMS "mini-CVs" that include basic data on their skills, location, etc. These are then sent by mobile to a central database--which hundreds of employers search daily via web or phone. From their side, employers create similar “mini job ads” and post them on the same database—so that job-seekers can search these jobs from their own handsets.
Through this simple but powerful technology, Souktel narrows the digital divide in developing countries--and breaks cycles of poverty and unemployment—by ‘leveling the playing field’ of access to job market information. In the past, job data was restricted to a privileged minority who had access to Internet, landlines, and elite social network. Now, Souktel bridges these digital gaps by enabling anyone with a basic mobile phone search thousands of jobs, and by enabling employers to tap into new labor pools that were previously unreachable (like rural women, or refugee men). Through simple mobile technology, we empower communities to discover that they have more choices and resources than ever before. Now, better market information lets more people find jobs/staff. More ‘job-matching’ leads to more income for needy families, and to more productivity for businesses that need qualified workers. The end result is better-connected communities that are economically active and prosperous.
Our Impact:
Since our launch in 2007, Souktel has impacted more than 20,000 low-income job-seekers: First, we’ve directly helped over 2,000 users in developing countries to find jobs, apprenticeships, or training that leads to income. Each newly-employed worker supports an average of 5 family members—meaning that close to 10,000 additional people have benefitted indirectly from Souktel’s technology. As of late 2009, we have a further 8,000 job-seekers and 200 employers using the application daily to get information about jobs/staff. Each month, we match about 50 new users with jobs or internships (temporary labor firms, the main competing solution, only match about 10 people per month). These numbers also show our impact on regional economic development: Each job-seeker who finds work through Souktel earns about $400/month. In a year, our 2,000 matched job-seekers earn a combined $9.6 million in new income—that’s close to $10 million injected into local communities, thanks to a simple mobile application.
Sustainability:
Souktel is financially and operationally self-sustainable: Job-seekers pay a modest premium SMS/data rate to search job ads or post their mini-CVs; employers pay slightly higher per-transaction fees to post jobs and search CVs. Through this model, job-seeker ARPU (average revenue per user) is about $1/month (net of mobile network revenue-share) and employer ARPU is about $10/month. With 8K job-seekers and 200 employers, current net income is roughly $10K/month—more than enough to cover minimal running costs (office space, servers, IT/outreach staff). Surplus revenue finances R&D and new market expansion. This financial self-sufficiency gives Souktel the resources to maintain ongoing operational outreach to local users—to ensure a sustainable supply of both jobs and staff. We work with our network partners to run regular PR drives/employer CRM campaigns that mitigate churn and drive more users to the service, promoting growth over time with minimal cost outlays.
Scalability:
Souktel has been intentionally designed to be easily scalable and replicable across the developing world. Our SMS-accessible software service requires minimal hardware, minimal set-up time, and minimal added cost to increase its scope and reach. For technical scale-up, our database and gateway structure are easily expandable to accommodate thousands of new users (right now we’re adding hundreds of new users every month). For service model scale-up, we work with national mobile networks to promote Souktel among large numbers of job-seekers and employers through low-cost, high-reach PR channels—enabling quick growth with minimal expenditure. Replicating Souktel is also easy; we’re doing it right now, as we expand our East Africa service into new areas of the former Somalia. In a matter of weeks, we’ve “cloned” our database system to create a local version that runs on our hub servers, but with a front end that’s managed remotely in local languages. We’re now helping local colleagues build ties with local mobile networks, employers, and community groups to get a ‘critical mass’ of new job seekers and employers using the technology.