A website connecting South African home-owners to tradesmen such as builders in their immediate area is starting to take off, say its founders.
‘Near a Builder’ helps artisans save time by not having to physically visit a potential client in order to offer a quote, while the client is assisted by the online offering’s vetting system.
The startup went live on 23 February this year and it has listed work of just under R2.5 million, says its founders. The service is free for home-owners and clients, while tradesmen operate on a pay-as-you-go basis.
A client visits the near a builder website and lists a job and its relevant specifications. Once the job is online, the system uses Google maps to notify ten tradesmen within a 20km radius of the potential contract.
The tradesmen are then prompted to respond as to whether they want to quote on the job or not. Meanwhile, the first five to respond to the posting have their quotes forwarded to the client.
Once the job has been completed, clients are encouraged to review and rate their service provider.
Based in Cape Town, ‘Near a Builder’ is the brainchild of co-founders Roy Postings, Danny Havenga and Sebastian Matroos. Postings has spent over 16 years in the building trade.
“Home-owners are always sceptical about having tradesmen who are going to take their money, rip them and do a bad job so we want to take the tradesmen and have him do his quotation online which will save him time and cost him considerably less,” says Posting.
“The home-owner in turn saves time by receiving five contractors profile pages detailing how qualified they are, how long they have been in business, their references and so forth,” Postings explains.
The startup’s founders say they struggled initially to attract interest from potential investors.
However, Havenga approached business incubator and African venture capital firm 88mph.
And after being selected from an initial 400 applicants by 88mph and then undergoing a gruelling interview process, near a builder was invited to become part of the 88mph incubator, which has a base in Cape Town’s creative centre of Woodstock.
“We didn’t know this at the time but they were looking for people who actually knew the specific industry they wanted to operate in. We have the domain experience, we know how to market, we know how to sign up builders and how to treat home-owners and we had the market research and they liked that,” says Havenga.
Postings and his co-founders, though, are aware of the obstacles that face them going forward. None more involves the dual challenge of developing brand visibility while changing the mindset of the public when it comes to hiring a tradesman.
“The general public are used to doing property maintenance in a certain way and have been doing it for years. You phone up a guy who comes and meets you face to face and quotes you. We are trying to do that on a platform. Our greatest challenge is getting our brand out there and getting the public to know about it,” says Postings.
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