Raj Singh is the CEO of Sooqini. Raj is a technology entrepreneur and investor, with over 25 years of experience in innovation and IT, as applied to technology-enabled companies and their ecosystems. We caught up with him to hear more about Sooqini
1. Can you describe what Sooqini does and how it began?
Very simply it’s the place to get stuff done, a task marketplace where local trusted sellers do your to do’s and chores for you, to free up your time for the more fun things in life.
Tiago Mateus, Nick Bransby-Williams and I launched Sooqini in London in 2012, because there wasn’t a way to get something done on your terms: schedule, location and price…
3. Why do you think Sooqini has been so successful?
It’s a lifestyle thing – people (especially Gen Y/Millennials) are more inclined to outsource personal and professional tasks than ever before. If you don’t want to do it, or are too busy, have someone else do it. We’re one of the solutions to help you be more efficient and productive, so you can focus on the good stuff.
Also, in the UK we’re seeing a re-emphasis back to “Made in GB” and sourcing things locally – Sooqini beats the Yellow Pages or Google when it comes to finding local people to do a job for you. Our website is clever: we enable businesses or individuals to find you and bid on your job rather than you, the consumer, having to do all the legwork.
4. What is your favourite example so far of an innovative use of Sooqini?
Sooqini sponsored an Apprentice-like challenge at King’s College, London where two teams had to quickly come up with two business ideas and in only a week, prove their concept and maximize sales. One developed a peer-to-peer university tutoring service, the other a nightclub events service for students.
With our platform, in the first four hours they made £100s from doing local jobs. They re-invested the proceeds in marketing collateral and social media advertising, and used Sooqini to setup an instant “Market Stall” to market and sell their services at minimal cost.
At the end of the first week, using the Sooqini platform, both teams generated over £1,000 in sales, proved their concept with over 50 customers and got client satisfaction ratings. What’s even better, they started companies to build on the ideas – that’s awesome stuff!
5. Are there any challenges your business has faced?
Because of the sheer breadth of skills that 18,000+ people have, it’s tough to get the message out there that we can get pretty much anything done for almost anybody in London…
6. How might Sooqini work alongside other collaborative consumption services?
There’s a few obvious tie-ups for example a builder on Sooqini might need to rent a drill for a few hours to do a job, and he could find that on RentMyItems. Or say someone hiring an event venue on HireSpace needed staff, Sooqini is the perfect place to find them.
In part, this opportunity is why we are starting the UK Sharing Collaboration organisation. UKShareCo’s mission is to bring the Sharing Economy together, so that everyone knows what it is about, can take advantage of what’s out there, and know that members work to a consistently high standard they can trust.
7. What could UK/EU policy makers do to assist the sharing economy?
To empower communities to become more efficient by using Sharing Economy services like Sooqini to let everyone in the community know what resources (skills and stuff) they can access.
Additionally, these CollCons networks only work if the participants have access to the Internet, via a smartphone, tablet or PC. Bringing everyone in the UK online with decent broadband would be a big step towards getting everyone sharing more.
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