Gearing up for Nairobi Tech Week 2016: A Chat With Leila Khalif

 

 

Leila Khalif is a young entrepreneur and one half of the brainchild behind Taskwetu. At only 21, Leila Khalif went against the norm. After university, instead of going into regular employment, the international relations graduate from the United States International University (USIU) took a huge leap of faith and decided to start her own business.

Established in August 2014, Ms Khalif partnered with her fellow classmate Edwin Nderitu to form Taskwetu, which literally translates to “leave the task to us.” “Edwin and I shared the same vision which was to start a sustainable business that would solve a problem currently faced in Kenya. He had also run a couple of businesses so his experience was a plus,” she said. Aptly named, Taskwetu is an online errand service that relieves people of the hustle of doing various errands by getting them done through trusted errand runners.

Taskwetu provides a wide range of services ranging from document delivery, apartment cleaning, shopping, plumbing, fencing of property and numerous other errands. The business also processes documents such as birth certificates and business permits.

“We basically do anything that Kenyans can delegate to someone so that they can free that time and do what they love,” said Ms Khalif who is the startups chief executive. The platform allows users to get tasks done from the comfort of their homes or offices thus allowing them to stick to their usual routines minus the errands. How awesome is that?! And all it takes is a click of a button.

To get an errand done by Taskwetu:the user posts a task on the taskwetu.com websiteby either selecting from an available list or describing the task, after which one pays for the service and a trusted errand runner is dispatched to do the job. Once the job is done, the client can then rate the errand runner. And client reviews have been quite favourable.

“We have a steady stream of customers coming in and we have maintained a high retention rate. This has validated our business and made it sustainable,” said Ms Khalif.

Despite this success, just like any other start-up, the business has been faced with some challenges. One of them being competitors.

“To edge out our competitors, our errand services are tailor made to each customer’s personal needs and we maintain high standards of quality service. This is because we work with errand runners who go through a thorough vetting process and training on good customer service,” Ms Khalif said.

“Another major challenge we face is hiring and keeping talented individuals. Most people don’t know working for a startup is different from working for a corporate,” she added.

In spite of these challenges, the young entrepreneur’s resolve is unwavered. In future, she hopes to firmly ground her business feet in Nairobi and diversify its services depending on customers’ needs. Today, many young people are hesitant to venture into business citing challenges like lack of capital and preferring to search for white collar jobs instead. However, Ms Khalif believes the youth can rise above these challenges and thrive at business.

“Don’t let lack of capital hinder you from pursuing your goals. Where there is a will there is a way. So long as you have identified a problem and have validated your solution (which is your business model) then you are good to go. Persistence plays a huge part in running a startup because you will get many rejections. It’s your personality that gets things going. Work on it,” she said.