Uncle Bob is linking Artisans to ready markets. #40Days40FinTechs Initiative Season 5, Day 26

Uganda is blessed with hundreds of talented and competent Artisans. However, many of these are unable to showcase their skills due to absence of a ready and stable market for their services.

While their services are needed by different customers on a daily, linking up with these customers is usually a problem. It is this gap that Uncle Bob was established to close with the help of technology.

Uncle Bob is a digital platform that reimagines connections in a lively marketplace, uniting professionals from various fields with those seeking their expertise, turning connections into collaborations and dreams into reality.

Its key features include Home Solutions, Business to Business solutions, Artisans and Stores.

“Uncle Bob is a mobile APP that links customers to Artisans. What we do is that we onboard young men and women on Uncle Bob and make them available to customers who need their services. A customer only needs to download our APP, create an account, make a request for a service provider and we shall automatically link them to a professional service provider. Before we onboard any service provider, we take them through a series of competence assessment to ensure that each Artisan is qualified for the service s/he says they offer,” Denis Tusubira Kamira, the Project Coordinator, Uncle Bob said.

He added: “For example if a customer is looking for electrical services, when they log on to the APP, they will find different services. The customer will then select “Electrical Services,” and a dropdown of the various services under Electrical will appear. The customer will then select the exact service they need, when they need it and then submit the request. We usually encourage the customers to first submit an inspect and quote request so that the Artisan first shows up, gets to know the details of the job and then issues a proper quotation for this job.”

Mr Tusubira emphasized that Uncle Bob not only connects the Artisans to customers but also follows up to ensure that each job was completed before the service providers get paid.

“The platform has integrated with two Aggregators – Yo Uganda and Pegasus. When a customer makes a payment via mobile money, it is deducted and received on our account and the job will be accepted on the system. Once the job is done, we get a confirmation from the customer that job has been completed after which we transfer the payment to the Artisan. In future, we intend to integrate directly with mobile money operators so that to make our services faster and seamless for Artisans and customers.”

He highlighted that Uncle Bob has so far identified about 5000 Artisans with in Kampala, Mukono and Wakiso, and onboarded over 3,500 Artisans. He noted that Uncle Bob is supported by Mastercard Foundation and Private Sector Foundation Uganda through the Lead Firm Structure program.

Uncle Bob has featured on Day 26 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.