mrUsta was conceptualized a few years back when, CEO and co-founder Ibrahim Colak’s, air conditioner broke down in the middle of the UAE’s sweltering summer. After countless phone calls that yielded no results and what seemed like hundreds of broken promises, Mr Ibrahim Colak then came to the realization that there was a need to connect customers in need – such as himself in this experience – directly with service providers in a convenient manner. This idea –what is now mrUsta – was so compelling that he resigned from his job to focus on mrUsta full-time.
In terms of development, mrUsta was built on numerous case studies from several online service provider marketplaces around the globe. Based on his learnings, a business model was created that was UAE-friendly. One of the co-founders is the CTO, so he immediately set out to concurrently code the website & build the IT team. Service providers (Ustas) were initially secured to our platform through a third-party field force who paid them visits in person to educate them about mrUsta.
The aim of mrUsta is to take what is traditionally; an offline industry online. Therefore, the backbone of mrUsta is very much digital, where their website and app are the core of their business.
The platform connects customers seeking out jobs (plumbing, carpentry, for example) directly to the service providers. In brief, once a customer posts their job, the CRM team verifies the details to make sure that is enough for a service provider to provide an accurate offer. Posting a job generally takes around 3 minutes, while a job can be verified within five minutes during peak working hours. After verification, the job request is automatically pushed to service providers within that category. With the most popular categories, the customer can expect up to 5 offers within half an hour. The customer then decides which service provider to go with based on cost and customer reviews, then simply assigns the job to the provider on the app or website.
There are some challenges to setting up a company in Dubai, whether financial or overcoming bureaucratic hurdles. Most start-ups will find a way to get themselves through this maze of paperwork and requests & the most prominent challenge is one of education. As the demographics of the UAE is most diverse and complex, finding one common ‘language’ so-to-speak to explain to the populace about mrUsta is difficult. There are varying degrees of ‘tech-savviness’ in the UAE, not at the level you would expect to see in Europe and the West. Therefore, the challenge is not only to educate the population about mrUsta, but to a certain degree, teaching them how to use it.
mrUsta sees the same challenge with service providers. Since an overwhelming number of them do not exist in any form in the online realm, teaching them how to take their business from offline to online does require time and patience.
The five core values that they live by in mrUsta: They are fun and friendly, care for the community, trustworthy and reliable, are smart and dynamic.
Their vision is ‘better services for a better life’ & hopes that mrUsta makes life just so much easier for everyone. Their mission is straightforward and self-explanatory: ‘to create a happy, online community by connecting customers and trusted service providers efficiently, in a transparent and convenient manner.’ Says, Mr Ibrahim Colak.
They have over 250 categories offer on their platform – anything from auto services to language classes can be found on mrUsta. To a certain extent, they do cater for businesses; however, their core target are consumers; both residents and nationals.
Quality and competitiveness gives mrUsta the competitive edge. Over time, the quality of service providers has drastically improved as they allow customers to review the service.
Mr. Ibrahim Colak claims that if a service provider gets three bad reviews in a row or one very atrocious review they are kicked off the platform as a result which they have seen the quality of services go up whilst rates go down as the providers understand they are competing with others for a customer’s business.
Another competitive edge is the ease of use of the platform. mrUsta was developed with the customer at the core; therefore, they worked hard and continue to improve the customer journey to make sure it as seamless and as streamlined as possible.
Before mrUsta, most service providers only offered their services to their immediate neighborhoods. With no online presence and a small marketing budget, the natural territory where they worked was the one immediately adjacent to them. By taking a traditionally offline industry and putting it online, mrUsta has expanded the geographical reach of every single service provider on their platform. A provider that is based in Deira can now do business in the Dubai Marina for example; one that is in Dubai can now offer their services to Abu Dhabi.
For most of these service providers to survive, they must expand their market reach. And that is why mrUsta is pivotal to the service industry.
Mr. Ibrahim Colak says, at mrUsta, they like to be ahead of the curve. If they find that a certain digital breakthrough works to improve the customer experience, they implement it on their platform. For example, part of their development roadmap now is to include machine learning on mrUsta – one that can accurately predict pricing and other relevant details based on their historical data.
In addition, with the success of our UAE operations, they will soon be expanding to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two markets ‘hungry’ for technologies that make their lives more convenient. They are also studying the feasibility of expanding into other regional markets.
Before signing off, Mr. Ibrahim Colak says that service industry is extremely diverse with no one ‘magic solution’ that solves the challenges of the entire sector, he believes that technology; particularly ones that help service providers connect directly to customers is what has and will continue to enhance the service industry.
