Crowdsourcing at the service of socially responsible outsourcing

In the age of telecommuting and agile modes, Isahit is taking advantage of the digital transformation to enable women in Francophone and Anglophone Africa to acquire digital skills through its task outsourcing platform. Isabelle Mashola, co-founder of the start-up, looks back on this step forward towards socially responsible outsourcing and the digital inclusion of women.

Crowdsourcing's bet

Isahit is an internet platform for outsourcing digital tasks. It is based on the principle of crowdsourcing: a large number of workers (literally a crowd) connect and volunteer to carry out missions according to their skills and aptitudes. "Convinced that digital education is a key development lever for women in Africa, I co-founded isahit in June 2016, after having worked as an IT manager in large international groups", explains Isabelle Mashola, co-founder of the start-up.

Client companies (banking groups, restaurants, furniture retailers, etc.) divide some digital projects into micro-tasks that can be performed by the women employed by Isahit, also known as "hotshots" [HIT: Human Task Intelligent, a task that only human intelligence can perform, N.D.L.R.]. HIT: Human Task Intelligent, a task that only human intelligence can perform, N.D.L.R.] "Writing, curation, categorization and moderation of contents, image croppingThese tasks are very varied! Many rely on human input to guide and improve Artificial Intelligence (AI) based solutions. "For example? Enriching deep learning algorithms by integrating thousands of visual or audio contents in different languages, or completing tasks that AI is not able to fully support, such as reading complex invoices.

More than 13 million micro-tasks and 500 digital projects have already been carried out by the hiteuses.

The start-up's customers benefit from agile work (all types of volumes, 7 days a week) carried out very quickly, and from an innovative solution at a competitive price. They also participate in a responsible project that can be part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy.

Helping women achieve their life project

"We are now present in 17 African countries and enable 1,000 women to connect to digital through work. The additional income provided by this activity helps them to realise their life plans: to continue or resume their studies, to develop their business, to become entrepreneurs, etc.", explains Isabelle Mashola. The platform also enables them to acquire concrete digital skills for their daily lives or their professional integration (online monitoring, referencing, CRM, spreadsheets, etc.). In addition, 5% of the revenue generated by the platform is devoted to a special programme to equip young female entrepreneurs, offer free training or connection hours to women who start up on Isahit.

"Our goal in the coming years? To have 10,000 people working in French and English-speaking Africa while opening the platform to Asia and Latin America," concludes Isabelle Mashola.

Source: Orange Start-up