The story begins with a teenager on a mission to make himself stand out from his more successful siblings. As a middle child, always feeling like he is one step behind his big brother, he wanted to prove himself by being different and unique in his approach to life. And this is how one idea led to another, and he founded HelloTask.
HelloTask is an impactful company that helps connect women looking for work as house-helps with the families looking for the much-needed assistance. This is the story of Mehedi Shoron, the Co-Founder and CEO of HelloTask.
Shoron was in his teenage when he started to have the knack to do something different, among many ideas and endeavors one idea stood out, and that was to assist the people living in Dhaka City by providing the service of on-demand grocery shopping and other conveniences. This led to the creation of the cleverly named company RobotDako. Shoron himself felt its need as it was also inconvenient for him to live on the seventh floor of a building without an elevator and having to climb the stairs to do his regular shopping.
But as time went on the need for these services was replaced with the demand for assistance in household chores.
In Dhaka city, there has always been a trend for a household to employ a permanent or a part-time maid to help with the day-to-day chores. Shoron found that his service RobotDako had a unique opportunity to cater to that market, and so he decided to launch a campaign titled “ম্যাডাম একদিন আসেন তো তিন দিন আসেন না” (Madam comes one day and is absent the next three). The message resonated quickly and he saw an untapped market full of potential.
But the journey wasn’t as smooth. “The problem for a third world nation like ours is that most of the blue-collar workers were not equipped with smartphones let alone be comfortable to use an app to conduct their day-to-day operation” Shoron said. It was a wide gap that his business needed to fill, and many attempts were made such as employing agents who would manually call each housemaid to ask for his or her availability; which meant that even though demand was high, HelloTask struggled to fully implement their strategy and expand.
Currently HelloTask operates in Dhaka but plans to expand to the whole country in future.
This success didn’t come easy. “It’s important to understand that opening a new venture means having a clear-cut plan for the nearest future, you need to accept that there will be struggles at least for the next 5 years. You need to be prepared and have the right mindset to stay in the game and adapt to challenges as it comes” Shoron added.
People these days when thinking of “Startups” think about series such as Silicon Valley etc. Perhaps in the Bangladeshi context, some people think of rich kids with complicated ideas pitching to venture capitalists willing to fund them. This scenario is not far from the truth. But it’s important to add that there is a market for startups with ideas that make a significant impact in this society. A company such as HelloTask is not only providing a valuable and secure service to the middle-income households of Dhaka city but also providing a platform to underprivileged female workers also. They are being incorporated into the social economic system as they have the opportunity to earn a decent living through this service. Mehedi Shoron is also empowering these women to be independent and self-sufficient. As the RMG industry did for rural women, HelloTask is a better and well-equipped platform to connect these underprivileged women to the workforce who otherwise would have been neglected.
It’s only a matter of time before HelloTask seeks opportunities abroad and till now there are not many competitive partners in the space of household services. Shoron believes it is because the startup community in Bangladesh often fails to consider the problems of the middle and lower-middle-income population.
Although this phenomenon is changing, and for new entrepreneurs, Mehedi Shoron is an example of coming up with a brilliant business solution that caters to a wide market. His business inclination and awareness of people’s needs is a talent to be cherished. He advised the next generation of young entrepreneurs to have a wider horizon of thinking and making a positive change in society Companies such as HelloTask are an example of having the perfect mixture of being business savvy and contributing holistically to the community at large.