a $160B global industry, has created over 1.5M back-office and administrative jobs in large cities in India, China, and the Philippines. But this wealth is concentrated among roughly 100 outsourcing multinationals—small firms in poor regions can’t compete effectively for outsourcing contracts. Lack of trust and structural and perception-related problems are to blame: Training and certification programs are too costly for small firms, bandwidth requirements and money transfer costs are high on most online marketplaces, and small firms don’t benefit from social labeling that helps small producers of goods and commodities. Indeed, less than 1% of total traffic on the top 7 online marketplaces for small business outsourcing comes from Africa, while over 70% comes from the US, Canada, Eastern Europe and India. Our Solution Samasource derives its name from the word sama, Sanskrit for “equal” – we level the playing field for small firms, addressing trust, structural and perception-related issues by: 1. Connecting them to global markets: We’re piloting a system to train, screen, select, and market promising small service companies using a web-based platform with substantial offline support. Our pilot has generated over $30,000 in contracts for 8 small firms in Nairobi, Kathmandu, and Bihar since June 2008. Clients include large non-profits, start-ups, and socially responsible companies. 2. Defining and promoting socially responsible outsourcing, the first fair trade label for services, to galvanize consumer support for outsourcing to small- and mid-sized providers: We have built a community around this concept through a blog and videos on outsourcing in sub-Saharan Africa and rural India. Our model is analogous to Kiva.org’s—instead of disbursing loans to entrepreneurs through microfinance institutions, our platform disburses work to skilled people through screened small businesses.

Describe the current stage of your initiative and your implementation plan over the next three years

Using $35,000 in seed funding from the Business in Development Competition and the Stanford Social Entrepreneurship Challenge, we developed the first-ever guiding principles for socially responsible outsourcing, completed a feasibility study with over 50 small companies and 100 students in Nairobi, Kenya, and launched a pilot with 8 companies in Nairobi, Bihar, and Nepal. The pilot tests our screening model for small firms, including an on-line application, site inspection, and management interview; and our sales process, which includes partnerships with oDesk and Elance and free advertising through Google AdWords, YouTube, and Facebook.

In the next six months, we plan to complete the alpha version of our web platform, which screens SMEs in a semi-automated process, markets them under a common brand to global clients, and allows those clients to post requests for quotes, evaluate responses from different firms, negotiate and sign contracts with firms, access a variety of project management tools, and communicate seamlessly through cheap VOIP technology, making it easy to work with small firms.

In the next three years, we plan to: (1) launch our training program, which includes modules to develop technical capacity and project management skills, in collaboration with Enablis, the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School, and other partners, in Ghana, Kenya, and Northern India/Nepal; (2) add 250 service providers to our network (50+ SMEs applied to join Samasource in the last 4 months, and we only had capacity to take on 8); (3) Build a world-class engineering and business development team to build out our platform and enable additional scale.

Describe how your strategy meets the entry criteria ("What We're Looking For")

Our model is comprehensive: it tackles three core challenges with outsourcing to small firms: (1) we build trust by screening firms using due diligence criteria adapted from large outsourcing industry brokers; (2) we address structural issues by complementing our web platform with offline support to work with small companies in remote regions; (3) we address perception problems with training and a common social label. It is also timely: we are building our hub in East Africa, where 3 new fiber-optic cables are being laid, enabling the growth of thousands of small BPO/IT companies.
Samasource developed out of a series of conversations between BPO/IT entrepreneurs and our founding team—our model simply addresses the most pressing challenge for small companies: finding clients. With only $35,000, our team bootstrapped the development of a cutting-edge web platform and due diligence process for small firms, and a pilot with 8 firms. We’re convinced this model could scale with additional resources, based on the pilot run.

Describe the qualifications and experience of you and/or your team and your ability to execute your implementation plan

Prior to Samasource, Leila Chirayath Janah (BA, African Development Studies, Harvard University) worked as a management consultant with Katzenbach Partners, where she helped take an 11,000 person Indian outsourcing firm public and founded the firm’s Social Entrepreneurs’ Forum. Before Katzenbach, Leila left the nonprofit world and a consulting position at the World Bank after becoming frustrated with traditional approaches to poverty alleviation that ignored the problem of wasted, skilled talent.

Joy Sun (BS, Foreign Service, Georgetown University) previously directed operations for the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative, where she launched and managed public health programs throughout sub-Saharan Africa and supported the organization’s rapid growth from a start-up with ten volunteer staff into a global institution with more than 400 employees.

Wayne Mak (BS, Computer Science, Brandeis University), joined the team with deep expertise in building web applications for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Since moving to Silicon Valley last year, Wayne has developed and sold a number of successful social web applications for Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and Hi5.

Dr. Henry Thairu (PhD, Thermodynamics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology), was previously the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. He has also served on the boards of the Kenya Education Network and the Kenya Council of Science and Technology.