Chatting on this Group Could Land You a Job

Botswanan startup Mohiri has developed an AI-driven personalised job alerts service that connects subscribers with relevant vacancies through their mobile phones. Launched in November 2018, Mohiri is a social media-based chatbot that allows users to sign up for personalised alerts, in a bid to efficiently tackle unemployment in Botswana. The startup, which recently won the Gaborone leg of the Seedstars World competition, had come together previously, with the team building chatbots for businesses and government agencies without getting much traction. Director Thato Kasongo said this forced it to change its approach. “This is just because social media is the cheapest part of the internet for most Africans, because mobile network operators subsidise the cost,” Kasongo said. “Therefore we could reach more people without the limitations of expensive data costs.” That decision appears to have paid off, with Mohiri’s social-first approach taking it to 20,000 subscribers pretty quickly. A couple of hundred jobs have already been secured using the service, and Kasongo is expecting strong growth over the next year.

SOURCE: DISRUPT AFRICA