Story of the Month - Samasource

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Samasource is the world's first truly distributed Business Process Outsourcer (BPO). Samasource derives its name from the Sanskrit word sama, which means equal. It is a not-for-profit social business that brings dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty. By solving serious business needs through simple services, like data entry, transcription and quality assurance testing, Samasource creates opportunities. We are enabling marginalized people, from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan, to receive life-changing work opportunities via the Internet.
The core concept of the project is microwork. Microwork consists of small bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere that add up to a real livelihood for our partners. Samasource offers socially responsible companies, small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs in the US, the possibility to contribute to economic development by buying needed services at fair prices.
There are three stages to the Samasource model. First, we screen and select Service Partners (SPs). SPs are locally-owned small businesses, non-profits, and NGOs, from the poorest parts of the world. Next, Samasource provides SPs and their with free business training, using live sample projects, web-based tools, and site visits. The third stage is selling these high-quality services to paying clients through Samasource’s website and a sales team based around the world.
To date, Samasource has worked with 20 small businesses, nonprofit training centers, and rural data centers that provide dignified jobs to more than 700 marginalized individuals in Haiti, Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Ghana, rural India, and Pakistan. To complete the technical automation that will allow us to grow to $5 million US in yearly business and scale to 50 SPs with 1,000 employees each, Samasource needs to raise an additional $350,000 of seed capital.
Samasource was one of the winners of the BiD Challenge International 2007. Leila Chirayath, the entrepreneur, explains: “BiD is the reason we got started in the first place; the initial capital was enough to live on and get the business going.”
Take a look at Samasource’s website.

Read about other successful entrepreneurs: Success Stories.