U of O students strive to make contract work fast, efficient, and affordable
Two University of Ottawa students recently developed a mobile app to bridge the gap between small businesses and homeowners.
In August 2016, Jonathan Ibrahim, a second-year U of O marketing student, teamed up with his high school friend Daniel Laframboise, a third-year software engineer, to come up with the idea for the Taskrilla app as a way to bring contractors and services directly to one’s home with the touch of a button.
The premise of the app involves consumers choosing a service, filling in a description with specific details, choosing a date to receive the service, and then placing their order.
“We then connect you with a registered, certified, and insured contractor available to fulfill your request,” said Ibrahim.
Some of the services currently offered through the app range from snow removal to house cleaning to moving to emergency locksmithing.
“This problem is truly an exciting one to our team,” Ibrahim told the Fulcrum. “We have a real opportunity to help businesses grow and achieve the best out of themselves while creating a simpler and more efficient process to finding contractors (and) saving consumers the two most important things—time and money.”
Ibrahim and Laframboise launched their website in February 2017 to market the services currently offered by the app, and hope to add seven more services as part of their phase-two launch by mid-April.
Ibrahim said that with the phase-two launch, the app will see “new features like a user dashboard with past transactions, in-platform payment processing, and a user-friendly redesigned look.”
According to Ibrahim, the Taskrilla team is currently targeting homeowners aged 30-plus who are either too busy to take care of these things or are unable to.
“No matter their reasons, we’re here to help them” said Ibrahim, who hopes that the app will also catch on with tech-savvy millennials.
As of right now, Ibrahim and his team will be focused on enhancing and improving the app and the services available to homeowners and others looking for these services. According to the U of O entrepreneur, the team also hopes to expand to five major cities across Canada within the next three years.
“As with any tech company, the journey never ends. We are continuously developing, looking for new ways to make our user experience the best it can be, while thinking of new markets we might be able to work with.”
For more information about this app, please visit their official website or Facebook page.
