Born out of the need to bridge the talent gap that pulls down adequate and sustainable growth of businesses, Aya was built as a backbone for entrepreneurs.
Translated to mean resilience and resourcefulness, Aya was founded by Eric Annan to holistically focus on the well-being of both businesses and talents.
Affirming this in an interview with Afro Hustler, Annan said: “It’s a platform that is focused on matching businesses with the right talents, but we also go a step further than other platforms by also focusing on the holistic well-being of both businesses and talents.”
The platform provides its talents with training, education and mentoring to give them a problem-solving, adaptiveness, creativity, and empathy (PACE) mindset, skillset, as well as toolset to help them work and deliver efficiently in any environment.
Of course, it can be difficult finding the perfect fit for a job, that’s why Aya delivers zero reimbursements or replacements, placing its customers’ satisfaction with the talents they receive as a priority.
“That’s why we make sure that we don’t take their time for granted when it comes to hiring talent. We know that finding the right person for the job can be difficult and time-consuming, so we deliver zero reimbursements or replacements. We want to make sure that businesses are happy with the talent they receive from us,” Annan stated.
What Aya is building is similar to Upwork. Its goal is to drive creativity and innovation in the talent supply and demand ecosystem, thereby creating a broad-based workforce for African youth.
Ghanaian-born Eric Annan, Aya’s Founder is one of those who believes education is key to success. Navigating through school and graduating as a distinction student despite difficulties, he went to Nigeria in 2015 and began establishing himself as a blockchain and cryptocurrency expert in 2016, mentoring and motivating young people all around.
He founded KuBitX and Digitalkudi.com in 2017 and 2018 respectively, with a team from across 17 countries and three continents. Though there was growth failure, the company is still recognised as the first in Africa to partner with Interswitch and the first to tokenize the Ghana Cedi and Naira on the Stellar Protocols.
The failure was tied to lack of adequate talent, the team then decided to birth Ayagigs, as a resolution to the problem and to help other startups not to face the same issue.
Ayagigs is a marketplace where web3 talents/freelancers can be found. The startup is backed by Flori Ventures, Founder Institute, and Conscious Venture Lab, among others. Its partners include Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), Talent Protocol, TIIDE Lab, Draper University and others.
The first version of the company’s product was launched in April 2022. It affirms to have onboarded about 500 freelancers from across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia.
