Introducing An African Freelance Services Platform

Problem

Many African freelancers struggle to find job opportunities that align with their skills and interests. On the other hand, clients looking to hire freelancers often find it challenging to identify the right person for the job, resulting in a long and inefficient hiring process. There is an identifiable need in the market for a platform that can connect freelancers and clients seamlessly and provide a one-stop solution for all their hiring needs.

Upkazi aims to solve this problem by providing a user-friendly platform that connects African freelancers and clients in a hassle-free manner. The platform will allow freelancers to create profiles, bid on projects, and receive payment through the platform. Clients will be able to easily search for freelancers based on their specific needs and hire them through the platform, making the hiring process quick and efficient.

With Upkazi, freelancers and clients can easily connect and collaborate, resulting in a win-win situation for both parties. The platform provides a valuable solution to the problem of finding job opportunities and hiring the right freelancer, making it an essential tool for the African freelancing industry.

Solution

The Ugandan Freelance Services Platform, called “Upkazi,” will provide a solution for African freelancers who struggle to find job opportunities and clients who have difficulty finding suitable freelancers for their projects. The platform will act as a commission-based model where freelancers can create profiles, bid on projects, and receive payment through the platform. Freelancers can easily browse through job postings to find projects that match their skills and interests. Additionally, clients can browse through freelancer profiles and select the best candidate for their project. The platform aims to provide a seamless experience for both freelancers and clients, solving the problem of inefficient and time-consuming job searches and hiring processes.

Our Story

The thought of creating Upkazi came to our founder, in early 2023 after an unpleasant experience where he engaged and worked remotely with an unknown person he met online to help complete a tech project. While it is clear he needed help from an expert for a few days, he didn’t get one. What contributed to the bad experience include lack of online platforms within the region with an end-to-end process for employing remote manpower in a flexible and safe manner.

Clients

Whether you need a logo design for your new blog, or a video presenter who will help you introduce your company to potential clients, you are at the right place.

For everything that you do not know how to do yourself, or you simply don’t have the time, Upkazi freelancers are at your service. It is an African talent network for hire.

• Find a service or professionals for any project.
• Post projects and get proposals.
• Interview your favorites, hire the best fit and supply your brief.
• Collaborate on desktop or mobile.
• Chat, track projects, and get more done.
• Make payments easily.
• See and manage your transactions, get invoices, and approve service delivered.

Freelancers

Upkazi provides you with an opportunity to turn knowledge, talent or hobby into a permanent source of income! We’re here to provide security, privacy, and timely payments, so you can keep doing what you love the most.

• Never miss an opportunity
• Post your service
• Stand out by replying to clients quickly and getting to work
• Find interesting projects, submit proposals, chat, share files, and collaborate on the go
• Communicate promptly, complete projects and build your reputation.

Check below some of the Upkazi's features you should be aware of

• Account Segregation
  Upkazi has two separate user registrations, as well as account dashboard, between Upkazi clients and freelancers. We can manually or automatically approve freelancers before they are able to publish jobs on the platform.
• Affiliate (Refer a Friend Program)
  Upkazi’s refer a friend program, enable our users to earn money by referring other users to join and/or make purchases on Upkazi.
• Booking
  Upkazi’s users can manage date and time, sensitive jobs/appointments. Calendar of the available appointments are displayed at the time buyers are making a purchase.
• Buyer Processing Fee
  Upkazi’s service fees are 5.5% of the purchase amount. For purchases under $75, an additional $2.50 small order fee will be applied. All these are added and collected during the checkout process.
• Custom Offers
  Freelancers can send custom offers directly from the message conversation (provided that they have at least one service offer published/active). Offers can have an expiration date set by us, and can also be retracted by the freelancer at any time. Freelancers can accept (or deny) custom offer and pay for the service immediately.
• User Frontend
  We have built a complete custom user front-end which allows users to: post/edit service offers, update their payment/personal info, manage services purchased/sold, view transaction history, make withdrawal requests, post/respond to public service requests, contact support, etc.
• Discounts
  Ability for both Upkazi team, as well as freelancers, to generate discount codes for clients to use during the checkout process. We can configure so discounts are subtracted from our earnings, or freelancer’s earnings. This will be very effective for both Upkazi and its sellers for running promo campaigns.
• Featured Services
  Upkazi’s freelancers can pay for the featured spot/job on home, category and sub-category pages. Fully integrated/automated with all of the supported payment gateways we just mentioned above, like mobile money.
• Flexible Commission
  We set different commissions based on the user status (level) and/or total transaction amount. We shall reward and motivate our top freelancers based on their performance. In addition, we can also set a fixed amount or fixed percentage commission for all of the freelancers, regardless of the transaction amount and/or their status.
• Fully Responsive
  We understand how important it is to provide Upkazi users with optimal viewing experience which would ensure easy navigation, reading and checkout across a wide range of devices. So Upkazi is fully responsive on both desktop and mobile.
• Help & Support Centre
  Any product or service is only as good as its quality of support. For this particular reason we spared no expense in making sure we have a very sophisticated, fully integrated support center which will be appreciated by both Upkazi support team, as well as our end-users.
• Invoices
  Upkazi’s clients can generate and download invoices automatically from within the private transaction page. Users are able to customize all of the information being displayed on the invoice from within their profile page.
• iOS and Android apps
  Our Upkazi mobile apps breaks down all work barriers: browse your options, place orders, and get updates – anytime, anywhere. No matter where you are, what service you need, or which deadline and budget you’re working with, you can find the right freelancer here ➜ 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
• Job Extras
  Freelancers can upsell to their clients by offering optional extra services at an additional cost. Proven to increase sales up to 100%.
• Job Multiples
  Clients can purchase multiples of the same job and/or extra service. Increasing sales volume is all about making it more convenient for our end-users to make additional purchases, and Job Multiples offers just that to our freelancers.
• Live Chat
  No work marketplace is complete without a robust chat solution enabling users to interact in real time. Proven to increase sales and user satisfaction.
• Live Extras
  Upkazi provide its end-users with the convenience of being able to purchase additional job extras during an ongoing/live transaction, and drastically increase our sales!
• Milestone
  Freelancers can split the transaction into several payments, according to the completed phases of the agreed service. This is especially useful for larger jobs which amount to higher amounts of money.
• Multi-Currency Support
  Upkazi currency rates are auto-updated daily based on the Open Exchange Rates. Our users can checkout in Uganda shillings, Kenya shillings, and USD.
• Packages
  Freelancers can combine specific services into price bundles, for a maximum flexibility, convenience and, ultimately, increased revenue for them. A must have feature we’re working on to improve this Ugandan modern work platform.
• Payment Gateways
  Upkazi supports almost every payment methods out there: MTN MoMo, Airtel Money, Credit Card, PayPal along with Bank Transfer.
• Powerful Search Filter
  Our users are able to refine their search based on the reviews/feedback, newly posted service offers, price, and delivery time.
• Reorder (promote) Services
  With Promoted Gigs, you can push your Gig to prime locations in Upkazi’s search results, category pages, and other Upkazi pages.
• Seller Commission
  Upkazi takes a 20% cut of your earnings as a seller. Yes, only 20% of your earnings on the platform, meaning if your gig costs $5, you’ll earn $4 for each sale.
• Seller Notifications
  We offer our freelancers to subscribe to notifications for new service requests published within the categories of their interest and expertise. A great way for us to increase the number of bids each service request receives, as well as the revenue as a final result.
• Service Favorites
  Upkazi users has the ability to place services into favorites (bookmarks), and come back at a later date to complete the purchase. Favorites are accessible, and can be managed from the front-end user control panel.
• Service Requests
  Clients can post public service requests to which freelancers are able to respond with offers (provided that they have at least one service offer published/active). This functionality has proven to increase sales by as much as 20% on almost every top freelancing platforms in Europe, now it’s on Upkazi.
• SMS Notifications
  Along with email notifications, our users can now receive text mobile notifications. There will be no more missed offer requests, private messages, job deliveries, etc.
• Social Connect
  Leveraging the power of social networks. Our users can connect (register) to Upkazi, a Ugandan based online service marketplace with the social account of their choice, eliminating the need to fill out registration forms and remember usernames and passwords. Supported social networks; Google.
• Tax Module
  If it's mandatory to collect taxes on online sales in your country, tax will be added to each transaction automatically based on the location criteria.
• Freelancers and Clients ban
  We are going to ban users which are violating terms of service of our platform, along with keeping violations record.
• Freelancer Levels
  Upkazi users are automatically awarded statuses (levels) based on the volume of sales as well as the reputation. Sales volume criteria can be defined in our section for each level (i.e. minimum of $100 in sales for the previous month before the user is upgraded to Level 1).
• Messaging System
  We have built in sophisticated conversation type user messaging system featuring the file uploader, custom offers, filter for emails and URLs, as well as the message notifications.
• Rating System
  Online work platform is nothing without a proper feedback/rating system. That is precisely why are paying special attention in implementing robust, yet simple to use user rating and reputation system. Overall user reputation is going to be calculated based on the average feedback (1-5 star ratings) that a single user receives across all of his or her service offers. User reputation is then taken into account as a part of the criteria (logic) for automatically upgrading/downgrading user levels.
• Notification System
  Upkazi has a built in comprehensive notification system for all of the user actions, such as: services purchased/sold/delivered, order updated, mutual cancellation requested/accepted/denied, service modification requested, messages received, feedback posted, custom offer received/accepted/declined/retracted. Each notification is displayed in the user front-end notification system, and email notifications are sent to our users as well.
• Vacation Mode
  Upkazi freelancers can activate “vacation mode”, and pause their published jobs/services with three possible away messages/statuses: “on vacation”, “overbooked”, and “be back soon”. Freelancers can conveniently set an end date from the calendar, and Upkazi system will automatically put all the jobs in active mode.

By offering businesses access to top-quality freelance talent from around Africa, Upkazi platform helps companies achieve their goals in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

As a freelancer, it’s easy to create a profile, showcase your skills and expertise, and find job opportunities that match your interests and experience. With competitive rates and a streamlined process for communication, file sharing, and payment processing, Upkazi makes it easy to find and complete freelance projects.

Register here and join our ever growing African freelance community.