Lytee Is A Startup That Will Allow You To Hire Workers The Same Way You Would An Uber

Have you ever heard of on-demand services for labour? That’s exactly what Lytee is. If you’re not familiar with what on-demand services are then let me explain further; essentially Lytee is Uber but instead of ordering rides, you’re ordering skilled and unskilled workers. This means you can get plumbers, electricians, IT specialists, someone to walk your dog and even people willing to wait for you in fuel queues whilst you do other things.

I’m not too sure if you’ve heard of Task Rabbit but Lytee works pretty similarly and closer to home it’s an alternative to Cassava Smartech’s Technites program which has existed since 2015.

Personalised search

Lytee allows you to pretty much hire an ideal worker as you see things since there are so many options you can choose from. You can choose the gender of the Lytee and personalise the searches to employ Lytees who can speak your preferred language between Shona, English, Ndebele and even sign language, which is a plus.

Closer to home

Just like you would do with Uber or Vaya, you pick Lytees based on your location which could come in handy if you have an emergency that needs sorting out urgently and you want a helper as soon as possible then the location function work to your advantage. Remember proximity also factors into your charge. This means the further away your electrician is coming from the more they would normally charge as they have to factor in what it costs to get to your home. These costs will probably be more pronounced right now because of the existing fuel shortages.

Trust issues?

One of the potential stumbling blocks that Lytee might face once it goes live in February might be dealing with issues of trust. The question I have is will people trust to employ strangers they haven’t met or heard of from people they trust? If the application does pick up, it will become clear which Lytees are worth their weight as the ratings will point to that but initially you’re basically bringing a stranger into your home with no word of mouth as to how good or bad they are at doing the requested job.

In our communications with one of the founders of Lytee –Kuda Musasiwa- he said they had been looking at this issue for a while now and they have implemented security checks, obtained police clearances for the Lytees along with getting risk insurance. These security checks are among the reasons why the application will only get to launch in its beta phase in February. Apart from security checks, the Lytees will also be getting training in various cities which means this

Where will Lytee be available?

Initially, Lytee will be available in 7 cities which is cool once you consider that these location-based applications are usually launched in one city: Harare. Bulawayo if you’re lucky. Anything beyond those two cities is considered charity by developers and sometimes their resourced don’t stretch that far. Anyway, the 7 cities are: