AI Just Broke Outsourcing - Is Africa the Next Global Talent Goldmine, or Is Cheap Labor Already Obsolete? (feat. Gerard Holland)

Speaker A: Hey folks. Welcome to Snowpal Podcast. Our uh, guest today is Jared Holland. Jared is a chartered accountant and tech entrepreneur. He's the founder of TMA to connect global companies to Africa's top talent. Uh, who raised the raised Series A for other tech companies as well. Uh, Jared, thanks for taking the time to chat.

Speaker B: No worries. Good to be on here, Krish.

Speaker A: Uh, my pleasure. Before we get started, a quick intro about uh, yourself, what you do and what your company does and then we can jump right into the topics.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. My name's, Yep, Jared. I live in Melbourne, Australia and uh, run a company out of Africa, particularly out of South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia. It's not where I started my entrepreneurial journey. I do come from a finance and an accounting background. I was an outsourced CFO and that introduced me to originally international education. Um, when I eventually uh, had the courage to quit my job and go and start a business which that first business business was tailored around helping international students with employability. And we end up uh, building an internship placement platform and we took that through Australia to the UK and to Canada. And then in 2020 I was introduced to the African continent through Nelson, uh, and Winnie Mandela's grandson, a gentleman called Zonda Mandela, who uh, encouraged me to look at Africa. And I'd uh, never been to Africa but it, it definitely ignited something inside of me, an interest in that. Entrepreneurial flair you could call it. And eventually I jumped on a plane and I flew straight into uh, Ethiopia first and then to Rwanda, then into Kenya and South Africa and was completely blown away by the talent that is on the continent. Uh, the level of English proficiency, the tech capability, uh, education levels, the infrastructure that's happening in Africa, just, it wasn't what I expected in my, in my head and I was just blown away by it all. So uh, yeah, on the back of that talent match, Africa was born. And fast forward to today and we have people working from our really, um, fancy, I could say office, uh, spaces in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Nairobi and Addis, and working for companies in the usa, Australia, um, Canada, the uk, France, um, China, all over the place. And covering roles from tech to finance and accounting to sales support and customer service type roles, legal support, logistics, operational support, all types of higher end roles. And now very much going down an AI path which I'm sure we will talk about today.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for the introduction. There's plenty to unpack there. We've got like 40 minutes. I'm going to rush through much as quickly as I can. Uh, to get started. This is very interesting because I've not had the pleasure of talking to very many people, if anybody. I think I've talked to a couple of people, uh, from the African continent, but not nearly enough. I know you live in Australia, but clearly you're doing business in Africa. So let me start off with one of my very first questions. A lot of these are going to be, excuse my ignorance and some of the ignorance of, you know, just, just based on, uh, what I've worked with in the past. Jared, uh, first question is when we talk about talents or engineering talents in, say, developing countries, uh, forgive me if I'm taking a brush and painting a broad stroke. A lot of times you think about India as one of the countries where a lot of this work has happened, not nearly enough about a lot of the other countries that fall possibly in the same space. So one of the things that picked my interest, based on your introduction there was the amount of talent that you said there is in the countries that you're doing business in right now in Africa and the infrastructure. That's something not everybody is generally aware of. Uh, and as somebody who does business there surely travels there frequently enough, can you sort of help us get out of our ignorance, if you will?

Speaker B: Yeah, we'd love to. And you're right, India has been the powerhouse for 40 years and Philippines for the last 25 years. And I, I jokingly say that I compete against the Philippines every day because everyone I speak to either has some people in India or the Philippines or both. Uh, and. And Africa, I believe, is the next frontier. And it wasn't until I actually spent time on the continent that I realized what the opportunity was. We talked about infrastructure before. You know, my first, uh, ever drive in Africa was in Ethiopia, in Addis, in the capital city. And I still remember sitting in the back of the taxi and just looking out the window at all the sky rises going up and, um, the cranes in the sky and the buildings that were being erected and just thinking, wow, what is happening here? So South Africa is a lot more developed than, than that. Um, and Kenya, Nairobi is a city that is just absolutely, uh, thriving. And so you've got, um, these city metropolises that are very urbanized, that have Internet connectivity. Uh, there's backup power that's in place in most of the buildings, uh, that you would work from. And there's just a lot happening. And then when it comes to population size, every second person entering the workforce, the global workforce by 2035 will live on the continent of Africa. And that sounds like a crazy stat. You're like 50% of all people are going to live in Africa. But then when you start looking at the demographic numbers of the average age, the average age in Africa is 19. Now if you look to the USA, it's in the 40s, look to Monaco, it's 72 or something. And so you've got a really young population, uh, in Africa. And then that age group is now coming through and there's still, you know, families of a certain size. And as those kids are now turning to be 18, 19, 20, 21, there's a lot of people entering the workforce. And that then makes up a large proportion of the global workforce. By 2050, 2 billion people will live on the continent. So, you know, we, we think about China and the population of China and of India, you look at Africa is going to overtake and a huge number of people. Then when it comes to the access to the talent where, you know, it becomes important to me, there's millions of people graduating every year from university. And so you do have this really large pool that is not as tapped as say, India. Uh, now India has become, uh, very congested and saturated. There's a lot of price rise issues happening in India because everyone has gone there. The US went in the 70s and the 80s and helped India become this tech powerhouse. Uh, but now it's very saturated because everyone's there. Whereas people haven't quite worked out yet that there's amazing talent in Africa. And so you don't have that competitive pressure. So price becomes more, uh, favorable access to really good talent. And then you don't have people moving around as much because that's become an issue in the Philippines as well where people move around a lot. So you're forever replacing people. We're not having those issues in Africa, not yet anyway. We're probably five years away from when that may become a problem.

Speaker A: Wow, that's a lot of information that. Thank you so much. I can imagine the amount of learning I'm going to have in the next 30 minutes. So let me ask you, the things that come pop up in my head. Uh, so you mentioned a younger demographic, right? Which is kind of what India has been in the past and probably might still be, but just taking them as examples. So I'm only trying to compare and contrast because people are familiar with the general workforce in India, at least where I live in the U.S. you know, a lot of work actually has, uh, continued to go to India as well. Right. So that's the only reason I'm drawing these parallels so people can understand and compare and contrast. So younger demographic. You also mentioned English proficiency, which is very critical to having these conversations and building work primarily with the West, US and Europe as well. Right. Uh, and Australia. So that's a skill. Uh, you mentioned improving infrastructure. But the thing I want to also sort of understand, Jared, is from, uh, a couple of things. The first thing is if you take India as a country, I think it's about 1.3 million square miles, give or take, if memory serves me right. And you've got like 1.4 billion people packed into that country. Now Africa is, I don't know, Maybe there's like 58 or 59 different countries in Africa. And it's a huge continent. Right. And you, you mentioned three of the countries that you're doing business in. And one has to believe that there are dramatic cultural separations between not just countries, between regions within the same country, simply because they are huge. Right. It's just big, big continent with big countries. So is that a challenge from what you've seen so far and what you're seeing in future as to, hey, yep. Even if Africa as a continent offers talent at affordable prices in English as a language and a younger demographic, are, uh, there some bottlenecks or headwinds where companies are like, hey, I don't know which country to go to, I don't know which part of the country to go to. Um, there's going to be so many of these differences. It's big. And how do I size this up?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, it's a good question. And there's a, there's a good book called Africa, um, is not one Country. And a lot of people do sometimes think about Africa as being a country when it's like saying, Europe is a country. So, you know, people in Germany are very different to people in France and they, you know, they're next to each other. So it, it is a really good, um, I suppose realization that when you spend time on the continent or even just thinking about doing business on the continent, that, um, that every country is very different. And so if you want a French speaking person, for instance, then you're going to go and look to certain parts of Africa that have a lot of French speakers. Um, we talked about English capability. Accents become, uh, a bit of a thing too. So I'm finding more and more that accents is even more important, particularly for a lot of USA companies. Um, you know, I'll often get calls from, from businesses saying, look, Jerry, look, we really want people but just so you know, like, we need really neutral accents where if they're talking to clients, we don't want people to know that from another country. You know, Americans want to deal with Americans. That accent is super important. So South African accents are very different to Kenyan accents, which is different to Nigerian accents. And it plays out in every single country very similar to, to Europe, when, you know, you can tell a German speaking person from a French speaking person. So it is an important consideration that when you are looking at doing business in Africa that you actually do need to look at the individual countries. A lot of we've had some clients that have expanded into Africa. So by working with us, they've had some of our people working from, say, Johannesburg, supporting their business. And then they've said, well, I visited, I can see the opportunity, like I want to expand my business from a sales point of view into Africa. South Africa generally becomes a really good starting point. Um, it's probably the most Westernized of, um, of a lot of the, the countries in Africa. So a lot of businesses will get a foothold in South Africa and then they might work up into different parts of, of the continent. Um, so, yeah, to answer your question very directly, you've got to think about Africa as being, you know, the over 50 countries that it is, and do your research about if you want to expand from a business perspective as to what, which markets you want to approach and how you would approach it.

Speaker A: Okay, fair enough. Um, so, uh, you know, one of the reasons, you know, I've had this conversation more than once with my guests, you know, even when we actually ship certain jobs, uh, categories of jobs to India or find help. Jared, um, in my career that spans over 25 years in building software, and I've lived most of my life in the US Here, here. While there's incredible talent in every part of the world, the reasons I've generally seen us looking for help from outside our own borders is very unlikely because we cannot find the talent. I mean, I'm not saying it's always the case, but it's in my experience at least, it has generally been the case. It's not like, hey, I cannot find anybody in the continental U.S. or in the 50 states, Alaska and Hawaii inclusive, that I cannot find somebody to help me build this particular kind of software. The reason generally, for the most part, and I'm going to take a brush and print a broad stroke here, quite intentionally, has been the economies of scale and cost savings. Hey, it's actually cheaper to build this in Bangalore. Not as much anymore. Like you mentioned, the costs have gone up quite a bit, but it has been more affordable to build elsewhere than just within our own borders. Now that's uh, just keep that in mind for context. Now we talk about talents, yet we go, you know, we find labor that's affordable elsewhere is one of the other things that Africa and African countries bring to the table. And I think you kind of alluded to that. Is it the fact that it's actually more affordable to find talent in Kenya and Ethiopia compared to like Bangalore and Chennai and Delhi for instance?

Speaker B: Yes, definitely. So, uh, I'd say directly, yes, the India has become a lot more expensive now. Like eight, nine years ago, you know, India was still very, very affordable. Um, with all the demand on talent, people know what they're worth and they can ask for to be paid more, which then costs go up. I have spoken to clients where they were saying that every three months they were getting price increases of 15% from the client level because they have to keep up with what people are being paid. Um, and, and I think that's just a maturity thing that you know, India's been doing it for 40 years. They, they've become um, extremely good quality and, and people um, particularly living the big cities know that they can get paid more. Uh, Africa's on an earlier uh, part of that journey where the demand from uh, the Western world isn't there. So you know, you don't have all the big corporates that have come in and hire 5,000 people in one go. That is starting to happen. Um, though, you know, Google, Amazon are all in, in Africa. Um, but affordability is obviously a big driver. So it's funny now that pre covered it was almost like businesses when they talked about offshoring, it was a bit taboo and businesses wouldn't necessarily mention it. Now post Covid people like, yeah, I've had 20 people in Bangalore for 10 years. You know, yeah, I've got eight people in the Philippines, Manila. I've had them there for 15 years. I just no one knows about it. And then the other thing that's been happening recently is the cost of living. And you know, it's pretty broadcast in the media a lot. The usa, the uk, Australia, it's getting really expensive. And that's cost is on businesses as well. Not just the every, everyone running their lives. And so as it gets more expensive to run a business, businesses need to be profitable. Um, and so hiring people becomes much more expensive. You know, there's been a lot of wage growth, um, and the all the other costs of having a business, running a business too. So businesses are being forced to think globally when it comes to their, their resourcing needs. And if you can get someone doing the exact same job but it costs 70% less, then business is saying, well, I'm going to do that. Um, so yes, you could get the resource in the United States, but if you can get the exact same person doing it for less than half and they can do it at the same quality, that's what I think Covid has created for global uh, resourcing more than anything because people realized during COVID that you can work from anywhere. And people Forget that in 2019 most people went to the office five days a week. I went to the office five days a Week. Now if you tell a 24 year old now they have to go to the office for five days a week, they'll think you're crazy. They think we're cavemen, that we used to do that. But what Covid made everyone appreciate and executives and leaders in businesses is that, oh, I can trust my people working remotely to do their job. If I'm, you know, for tracking the outcomes of what they do. And what that has meant is people thought, okay, if I'm um, in Boston and I've got a team member in Boston that's working from home anyway, well, why can't I have a team member in Johannesburg or Bangalore for that matter doing the same work? But as from a business perspective it's costing me a lot less. So look, affordability is definitely one Krish, obviously. Um, but then the quality of work becomes really important. You still need to get to the same standard and AI is impacting that a lot now. I'm sure we'll talk about that later. Uh, and then we mentioned the English proficiency and English capability. Communication becomes really important. So accents are important. And the ability to communicate I think has never been more important. As everyone builds remote workforces, being able to communicate appropriately with team members that you may never actually meet is obviously really important because that's how things get done. So, um, they're probably the main uh, elements that businesses are looking for.

Speaker A: Thank you. We've got like over 25 minutes. It's time for me to make your life a little bit more difficult. My apologies, Jared. So the next set of things, I want to sort of play the devil's advocate, as I kind of almost always do, just to hear both sides of uh, you know, of the aisle, the perspectives from both sides. So it's not to say that I lean on one side of the other or the other in the things I want to ask you right now, it's just I want to sort of get your thoughts on the other side of things. Now we've established the fact that one of the main reasons, if the primary may not be primary, but kind of close to the primary purpose of trying to find help outside your own borders, particularly in the west, is because you want to enjoy the economies of scale. Cost of living is cheaper. You can find good resources at affordable prices. So you can build software, hardware, whatever it is that you're building a little bit cheaper. Right, that. Now we've established that to some extent. Let me ask you this. Three years ago, maybe two, three, four, give or take, that was very important because you needed help. Humans were the only ones that could provide that help. And you had to go wherever you needed to go to find Homo sapiens to find them, do that help for you. We are in the latter part of 2026. That's not the case anymore. Right. Um, so welcome to the world of AI. Uh, I've actually talked to somebody, I want to say he was from Sydney a while ago. Uh, he had told me that he had a team of 52 people, give or take, and he was able to drop that down to eight people to get the same stuff done. Now, when I've taken that example to other podcasts, people have asked me, hey, were they overstaffed to begin with, that they could let go of as many people? My contention, without knowing them specifically as a company, Jared, was just by virtue of me running a company, I know that you need a lot fewer people, a lot fewer people to get stuff done today. Right? Whatever that number is, it could be you could let go of maybe 60% of the team, maybe 70%, whatever the number is for that company in that part of the world. Now, given that, I want to get your thoughts on that, whether you agree or disagree, and based on that, if there is some truth to it as we are seeing, how does this cheaper labor make any difference? Is that going to become lesser and lesser important as we go? Because, hey, I needed 50 people. I could not hire 50 people in Washington, D.C. so I'm going to find 40 people in some other part of the world. But if I only need eight people now, I might as well hire those eight people in this country as opposed to going elsewhere. I mean, is there a. Is there valid validity to the argument, or am I missing something there?

Speaker B: No, I think it's a really interesting question, Krish, and I don't think anyone has the answer yet. Every business I speak to now has a different perspective on it. So there's many businesses I speak to that haven't reduced headcount yet. And then there's, there's cases like the one you're talking about where some businesses have, I, ah, played, I played golf last week with a gentleman who has an IT um, like agency type business. He used to have 22 people, he's now down to 12 and he's more profitable than he's, he's ever been. And that's just driving efficiency is the type of people that he's got. Obviously AI is playing an impact. He's being able to reduce his headcount. Other businesses have tried to use AI so far to do that and have had to reverse it and have had to go and hire more people back because the AI wasn't the efficiency thought they would get. They weren't able to get. Uh, it's a really interesting time. I think this is like this sort of one year period with this new revolution we're going through is a really interesting time where business leaders are working out what it all means. Some are sitting on their hands and thinking, okay, let's just see how this plays out a bit. Others are being really aggressive about it and like just, just all in. I mean I myself are playing with AI, um, every day. Like I just. The technologies, we've never seen a technology like this before. And the impact it's going to have, it's completely, it's amazing, right? And, and it's, it's like a, it's like a drug almost. Once you start using some of these tools and you see the benefit of it, you almost can't stop. So what does that mean for resourcing in the future? I debate this in my head every single day. And I am having coffees with people every day and asking this exact same question. And I'm getting views of business leaders that I know. No one seems to have the same answer. Um, in one regard, the way I think about it is that on one end we actually need way, way less people across the entire economy and we end up at 25, 30% unemployment globally. Now that's a pretty drastic, uh, position. It's not impossible. I think it's a low probability, but it's not impossible. But if we get to that point, the world's in a lot of trouble. You, I mean the USA cannot possibly survive with more than 20% unemployment. The country will implode on itself. Um, so that's sort of one extreme view. And then that won't be good for the developing world either because everything, everything will flow. But then on the other end, like every other revolution, people just end up doing different jobs. So there's, I think what a lot of businesses are doing at the minute is having AI enabled people that are working inside their businesses. So there's this saying that you've probably heard that AI won't take your job, but someone using AI will take your job. And I think we're going to go through that cycle for a bit and I hope that then all these new jobs end up coming out of it. I've got an example is uh, one of our clients in Toronto, they'd built AI agents, had about 20, 25 AI agents running. The CEO was running some, the CFO was. And they're like, now I'm going to manage all these agents because I don't know if you've built many agents yourself Chris, but you have to actually manage them like you're monitoring them all the time. They break something is not working, you need to fine tune it. So it actually becomes a bit of work to manage the agents to make sure they're doing what they need to do. It's not a, ah, you do it once, you leave it there and happy days like you go sit on a beach while your business makes all this money. It doesn't work like that. I don't think it will ever work like that. So they've got some of our people, um, two guys out of Johannesburg that are managing their agents for them. So I mentioned like one extreme before. We've got really high unemployment. Elon's correct, we've got abundance and everyone's just happy because somehow by no one working means that everything's all good. I think it's going to be chaos. Not like um, it's this beautiful place that we're all sitting in. But then the other side is that if you can have AI enabled people, this could be the greatest opportunity for the developing world. Because if we can have people that are based in um, South Africa, Kenya, Philippines, Colombia, doesn't matter. And you go and upskill them with the latest tools. Now this could be Claude as an example or it could be now using the open source models like Kimi and Quinn, so that you've got really low token costs and by making sure they're upskilled with these tools, they can perform at two to three times higher than what they otherwise would have three years ago. And then all of a sudden you can have lower cost resources doing that, doing the same work, but at a higher level than previously possible. And for a business owner, you're like, oh, this is amazing. I can get people that are much more affordable, they're doing work that are really high level because they're using the AI tools. And that for me, helps me drive my bottom line. And I can, and I can grow the business. So it's a bit of a not direct answer to your question, but the reason why it's not is that I don't have all the answers either. I don't think anyone does. But it's going to be an interesting space to play out for me. The optimism for me is that I think we can really, um, provide more opportunity to the developing world by making sure that they have access to these AI tools, they've been trained, and they're using these tools every single day. And then businesses get the benefit of having AI empowered m people that are more affordable, that can help drive their businesses, which every business owner, um, wants to obviously drive profitability.

Speaker A: Fair enough. We've got like 18 minutes. You have a hard stop. I don't. So I'm going to rush through these and you get maybe two minutes, three minutes tops. Because I want to go through at least four to five things with you here, given all the richness of the experience you bring to the table, quality, um, of talent. You mentioned, you know, the countries in Africa that you're doing business in. Uh, let me take a quick example here. I was visiting, uh, um, business and leisure. I was in India in the earlier this summer. I come from the southern part of India, about 100 miles give or take from Bangalore, Chennai, uh, you know, probably I want to say that the state in India which has the highest gdp, if I'm not wrong, right. It's doing better than every other part of the country. And we probably have more engineering colleges in that state in India than any other place put together. From what I understand, just context to people who are not aware of that part of the world. The reason I mentioned that is even in that city, which is doing very well, I was there for a decent amount of time. I want to have these AI related conversations, Jared, because people were doing that. But the number of conversations I was able to have and the depth of those conversations was not nearly anywhere near what I was generally expecting. And then I quickly learned that I have to do the 100 mile drive to Bangalore if my intent was to, uh, have more of those conversations, broader conversations and deeper conversations. And I Mention this because these are two big cities in India not too far from each other. But there's a seismic difference in the type of talent even within the same industry. Now, if you extrapolate this to Africa or other continents and bigger countries and you know, like, you know, I know countries in Africa like 2 million square miles, let alone the whole continent. Right. So when we say the type of talent, it's one thing to say, hey, somebody's an engineer who's able to help with X, Y and Z, but it's entirely another to say that that person or that group of people in that city or that town or that school are, ah, graduating with very specific skills that are going to be needed for the next set of things to happen, whatever that space is. So while I can appreciate the quality of talents in many countries, I just want to get your thoughts on, are we, Is there a challenge in finding very specific talent in certain, to solve certain type of problems, or is it more like, hey, for these types of problems you can go to some of these countries, but not exactly. If you're building software that relies exclusive exclusively on AI, for instance.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think like everything, there's a bell curve, right? So you're going to have people at one end of the bell curve that are really, really proficient, very smart, very experienced. Um, and then, you know, you got your middle group and your, and your lag is at the end. Where we've, uh, sort of adapted our model in the world of AI is sourcing people that have 5, 10, 15 years of experience already. So maybe they've been an engineer, a normal engineer, if I use those terms, um, because they've got the foundational experience behind them, but now they're using the AI tools to help them do their work. So rather than getting very early stage grads who don't have the experience yet, is actually targeting the people who do have a lot of experience. And I was on a call with a client based in France, um, last week, and they run all the software for the airline industry and they were saying that of their thousand engineers, no one writes code anymore. Literally no one writes a line of code. They're all reviewing code. So they're all on their phones watching the code build, they're reviewing it, but no one's writing any code. So it's changed the way what a software engineer does now because the AI tools are just so good at doing what they need to do, and they're getting better every single day. And so by having someone that has great experience in building things before can now use the AI to do the very technical coding they need to be able to review. It changes the profile of the type of person that you need. So when we go and recruit for people, if say, you know, you wanted a Java developer, then we would go to South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, and we will go and source the best person for that role. Now, just by the sheer weight of numbers and the bell curve I was talking about before, if we're just targeting the top 10% for those roles, we can go and find really good people. It's not that we're going to, you know, we're going for the bottom 30% or something like that. We can go and target the top 10%. It's harder to do in India now because the top 10% are getting paid a lot of money, but we don't have that saturation in these markets at the minute. So we can still go and get the really, really experienced people, not just education experience, but actually real world experience that have then been powered up with AI tools.

Speaker A: One of the challenges, Jared, that I've seen, I've had other people share their experience with me as well. When it comes to outsourced labor is not so much that you're not able to find the right type of talents. It's other types of problems when it comes to credibility and professionalism. And you mentioned accents and cultural differences and a number of other types of things. And so there is, like it or not, a certain sense of exhaustion when it comes to, hey, I need to find help outside the realm of my comfort zone. If I had the money I need to have, I want to have, I would rather find somebody like two miles from where I live as opposed to 2,000 miles from here. Now, when you bring more countries and more continents into the mix of things, do you generally see countries that have the money to dispense to find this help, have the motivation to learn the varying breadth of. I mean, it's exciting to learn the cultures at a personal level, but not necessarily at a professional level because you want to just get stuff done. So do you see that as a problem or a challenge of some form or shape that be like, hey, you know what? We know these countries and I'd rather stick to them as opposed to learn the 3rd, 4th and the 17th new country just because I can cut some corners and save some dollars?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's been a, it's a really big challenge. And we went through that ourselves. We, when we first, uh, when we first took the business into Africa to launch Talent Match Africa. Um, we did a work from home model and it was a disaster. It, it just, it didn't work 98% of the time. And so we realized that it, that's just not a model that's going to work for us because client service and the client experience is mission critical. If, if the client's not having a good experience then the client's just going to tap out. So we went and uh, found some of the, the most pristine office spaces in, in the countries and the cities that we're in. And then our talent come to the office. They are in state of the art facilities, they have free coffee. They in an environment that is conducive for collaboration and teamwork. So although you might have a couple of engineers that working in Johannesburg for you, they're in an office that is sitting around other engineers and also other marketers and other business people. And you've got that sense of um, loyalty and comradeship that you get the benefit of being in a team. And that's been really important for us in having really nice office space for people to go to and they feel proud when they, they go to work every day. And then we can help control too for the client. So if you were having an issue with one of the engineers for whatever it might be, we've got managers on the ground that can actually go and sit next to them and go and have a coffee and say, what's happening? Uh, what's going on? Your performance has dropped off. Is there something we need to know about? And then we take care of that hr, I suppose, component and then the client just gets to focus on the outcomes that they need. Building the relationships is still important. It's like if you have someone two miles down the road and you don't invest in having relationship, you're going to have the same problems as someone 2,000 miles away. So, um, but that always comes down to treating people no different. If they're based in Johannesburg or they're based in Seattle. You treat people exactly the same and that means, you know, investing some time with them, understanding about them and vice versa. Uh, and that also helps build culture and we can impact the culture by having really nice environments to work from. But our clients very much influence culture and that's how they treat them on zoom calls. It's how they bring them into team meetings. It's, you know, how they speak to them the same as they would speak to any employee. And if you foster a nice culture like that, then one, you get loyalty and longevity and then you get better results as well. But, you know, it does, it does take effort, though.

Speaker A: Uh, We've got what, 11 minutes, gives me time for three questions of my own and give you an opportunity to ask me anything you want to ask me as well. Um, you mentioned accents. Right. In a lighter vein, you mentioned, you know, clients do care for the actual accent. And I think I'm actually just as qualified to speak about this as anybody else because as I've, as I've gotten older and as I've tried to lose my accent, the Indian accent that I was born and raised with, Jared, the only thing I seem to lose as I get older is my sanity. But the accent's not going anywhere, right? Maybe a little bit has gone here and there, but not entirely. So. And I mention this because America is a melting pot of people and cultures and we are very pro immigration just as a country. Um, so there's a lot of accents. I can hardly imagine a phone call, A call at work. I've worked for, like a number of companies over the years where I've heard very monolithic accent. Right. It's always a variety of accents. Um, and I didn't think it was important that we spoke the language reasonably well enough. Um, so communication skills were always listed in the requirements. But when it came to actual hiring, from what I have seen, hey, if Krish can get the job done, it actually does not matter if his grammar is not, uh, perfect or his accents were not good. But you did mention that. So I'm curious, is there a, uh, different world, but that is a little bit more important than the world I'm perhaps living in?

Speaker B: Yeah, it depends on the type of role. So if, if you're going to be potentially engaging with clients, we're finding that clients are saying accent becomes really important. If you're a backend software engineer and you're never going to speak to a client in your life and you just coding and doing that, it obviously doesn't matter. I mean, internal communication is important, but it's not as important if you're client facing. And I think that becomes the real differentiator that, uh, how businesses think about it. Um, I do find that if someone is potentially going to be speaking with clients, there is a lot more of an emphasis now on accents. I think in the last 12 months, it's even more so than previously. Maybe that's because of a lot of what's happening around the world at the minute. With a lot of people moving around the world, a lot of migration. I mean, we've all seen the news. What's happening between Morocco and Spain in the last three days. So that sets a date stamp for us. You know, that's happened two, three days ago. It's in the media a lot. So there's just a lot happening in the media, and I think people are becoming a little bit more conscious about it. But, yeah, the differentiator in being, if you might talk to clients or you're not talking to clients, is influencing, um, how businesses want to put the preferences for, um, English accents, the rest of it.

Speaker A: Fair enough. Um, you know, I have one more. Couple more things, right? One is creativity. Now, we talk about countries and we talk about jobs, you know, more affordable labor in different parts of the world. One more time. In my entire career building software, Jared, um, it's almost always like, hey, we know what we want to build. We kind of either raise the money or we bootstrap funded, or we're working for a large company that's already profitable. So we have a grasp on what it is that we wanting to do and we go find help in helping us do it. What that means is the driver was always us. Uh, we were driving, sort of calling the shots and what needed to get done. That means the developing world is always playing catch up, meaning helping out, providing labor that's more affordable, cheaper, whatever the right word to use is. But the creativity, not as much. I'm not saying there isn't any. That's of course not the case. But even when I was in India, There were like 50 delivery apps in the city that I was in. But I didn't see very much beyond that when it came to creativity. I'm not saying there's none, but nowhere near in terms of the percentages that I would see in the U.S. for instance, is that going to be a problem where countries are only thinking about how do I survive, how do I provide support to the west, to the US So I can make money, I can provide the service for cheaper. Or do you see in your experience when you're going to Africa or other countries where they're actually doing something very different and new, something that the US Is not leading, but they are actually leading? Because when you talk leading the future, I hear America at the forefront of it, and then you hear China right away after that. There's not very many other countries that come into the mix in that conversation.

Speaker B: So one thing that excited me about Africa was the level of entrepreneurial activity. And it's more probably grassroots entrepreneurial activity. Obviously it doesn't there's not the capital inflows that go to Silicon Valley and to uh, China. But look at fintech. Fintech is a huge industry in, across all of Africa. Um, in Kenya there's M? Pesa. M? Pesa was actually developed before WeChat. And it's a full financial system that sits on an app on your phone and you trade with it. You can do all. The amount of options on M? Pesa just blows your mind. And you're like, well where did this technology come from? And it's been around for a long time. Nigeria has a huge tech entrepreneurial startup scene. There's a lot of fintech that happens out of there too. Most Africans I meet have a side hustle. People are doing things like by nature Africans are uh, you know, this hustle, entrepreneurship mentality. And I think we're now at the world of AI. Now you don't need capital to go and build a startup. Like you don't need to go and hire engineers now to go and build an idea that you've got. You can get a license to Claude code, put them a certain amount of, you know, in, per month to go and build it. And all of a sudden you've reduced some of these barriers to entry to go and build a business. I think that is going to accelerate some of that um, entrepreneurial activity that will happen on the continent. But there's so much of it happening more at a grassroots level. There's not like the unicorn VC money that people aren't putting $5 billion into it, into a company, um, like you are in Silicon Valley, but I mean Silicon Valley and New York, those markets are completely different to every market on the, in the world really. Um, but there's a lot happening. It's just not the big capital inflows that we like to hear about.

Speaker A: My last question to you, very simple question. I'm kidding. The political stability when it comes to Africa, um, not just the countries that you're doing business in, uh, just your high level thoughts in two minutes about, you know, you think about Africa, you're thinking about, you know, there are uh, I mean every country has its own set of issues but you know there's, there's no dearth of civil wars in Africa and things of that nature happening. So when it comes to political stability, where do you see that from? M. Your experience?

Speaker B: Yeah, I've never had any, any issues myself. Uh, then I think, I think what the bigger uh, issue now is what's happening in the media around um, migrants. I think Africans are seen to be appearing a lot in Europe, um, and other markets that matter, even Australia for that matter, where if there's societal problems it's, it's too often being pointed at, oh, there's, it's someone from Africa, it's someone from Morocco, it's someone from wherever, an African country. And it's only telling part of the story because you can, well, you can, you can spin whatever narrative you want. And I think the media is really beating that up a lot at the minute. And the problem that has is that people start to paint a picture, um, and that's not the real Africa that I know and the quality of the people that are there and the ability to do trade with Africa. And so I think right now it is a bit of a problem because people are getting this perception in their head and um, and that makes it makes my life more difficult because I'm um, convincing businesses to look to Africa, um, for their global resourcing. But if all they're seeing on the news is that migrants are causing problems in their own country and those migrants are from Africa, then that subconsciously or consciously changes their view as to whether they maybe want to engage with people, um, from the continent. So I think at the minute that's probably more of a problem in the media beat up that's happening. Um, you know, the, the. I've spent a fair bit of time in the US as well. Right. There's a lot of political, um, stress in the, in the usa. There's a lot of. Yeah, I've never, I've never seen, I mean the US I've never experienced before the last probably four years is, is almost a hatred between political parties. Like you vote this side or you vote this side and I won't talk to you because of who you vote for. It's not really a democracy when it's getting to that point.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And there's a lot of, there's a lot of things simmering underneath the surface in, in America. So, you know, I don't see some of these Western countries and more wealthy countries.

Speaker A: I'm glad you brought that up in the last 60 seconds. Thank you for that. You didn't bring this up 60 minutes ago. You know, thank you very much. You know, but before we go, any questions you have that I can answer?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, well, Chris, you've spent a lot of time in, uh, in Bangalore recently, tech powerhouse. And you spend time in India and you know, you've got a good familiarization, um, to it. If you were going to add resources in your business, you're based in the usa. So if you were going to add some resources, you're looking to other markets, why, why would you not look to Africa?

Speaker A: You know, you got three minutes for this answer. Yeah, okay.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker A: So, you know, uh, I've always said this, right? You know, I live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. my very first choice when we're trying to build something, Jared, has been, hey, can I find somebody who's literally in the driving distance of where I'm located? That's not to say that, you know, we are remote. We are a remote company. It's not like we need m people to come to an office and do stuff. But I, uh, wouldn't deny the convenience that I've seen in my experience of being able to see someone physically and having those conversations. Right. That exhaustion of video and audio is not theirs. That's usually preference number one. And if that does not happen for whatever reason, the next choice has always been, hey, can I find somebody in some other part of the country, within our own country, for instance? If that is not possible for many one or more reasons, either it's the talent, which is unlikely, most likely the money that we can dispense in hiring that resource, then we look towards some other places. And that actually has been, to me, I don't necessarily have a preference because I work with folks in Eastern Europe, uh, surely they are more expensive than folks in India, for instance, but more affordable than folks in the US Or Western Europe. And there's some incredible talent in the Czech Republic, um, uh, in Ukraine, for instance, and I worked with people. It's amazing talent there. Certainly a little bit less affordable, um, more affordable than here, but not as affordable as back in India. So the next option becomes, okay, you go to India, then you got to size up the part of the country that makes sense to you now, because I was born and raised in India and my formative years were there, I understand to some extent, you know, when you migrate, time stops. But I understand to some extent the colleges, the credibility, the towns, the exposure, the language and the culture. So I kind of have an idea as to what might work and what may not work. One of the challenges I can think of, not just myself, Jared, but for people in general, if I have to speak, speak to a larger population, uh, is understanding those cultures. Because even if you're building software, even if you're using AI to build software, you don't actually hiring a, uh, developer like you did three years ago, there is still a lot of Conversation that needs to happen constantly. So you're building the best quality software before you ship it to either your client or to your end customers, for instance. And for that to happen, in my experience, it's not enough if you just hired the best person from the best school in the best country in the region that you're going to. There's got to be a connect or lack of disconnect between your team and that person or those people. And being able to arrive at that happy medium is generally has been the challenge. So any new country that presents itself as, hey, I can do the job for cheaper, I can do it better, and all of those things has to be in a position to compare and contrast and sort of be able to explain clearly that, hey, why is it that you're going to be able to alleviate all of the issues that we typically tend to have in an outsourced type of position? Hopefully some of that makes sense.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you need the best person for the job at the right price. And I think that's how every decision is driven. And a lot of it's now, it used to be like, well, can I look to other markets for it? And now a lot of decision making around, well, how does AI can I can AI automate it? If not, how do I have someone that can help me use AI to do it? If not, what's the human I need to do it and then how much does it cost? And I think, you know, we all, as business professionals are weighing up that all the time.

Speaker A: Yeah, Just, I'll add one more quick thing to that. Right? Like if you take Africa as a continent, you know, the general awareness of all the countries, like, I, I don't know, there's like 58, 59, something like that. I probably can name like 18 of them, not the other 40, for instance, but you go out on the street, the average person may not even be able to name five of those countries. Right. That's problem number one and two is how do I tell the difference between talent in South Sudan versus Mauritania versus Johannesburg versus Kenya versus Ghana, you know what I mean? So you need to have a good sense of, hey, this is how the politics of that country is. This is the language that people are familiar with from, from not a programming standpoint, from a communication standpoint. And here is a culture, here are the number of hours they might work on a weekly basis, and here's the type of talent that we actually can provide. So if there's a way to bridge that gap, Jared, I can see more people wanting to try and explore this as an option so they don't feel like they're coming from a place of being ignorant about who they're going to be potentially working with.

Speaker B: And that's exactly why businesses end up working with us, because we do all that for them and then take all that research and knowledge that we've accumulated over many years. And at the end of the day, the business just wants the right person that can do the job and we take care of everything else. So it's a very easy pathway into a, uh, new market.

Speaker A: I'm going to let you have, I'm just going to reintroduce you, Jared, and then let you have the closing comment. Um, and I'll include the link to talentmatchafrica.com and your LinkedIn profile on, on the podcast, so folks can certainly reach out for help. Uh, again, thank you so much, Jared, for taking the time. Jared's a chartered accountant and a tech entrepreneur. Uh, and please do look up Talent Match Africa. That said, Jared, I want to let you have the closing comment. Please stay for like a minute after you're done.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, thanks. Chris, appreciate the conversation. It's been great to really bounce around. Um, you know, what's on your background and particularly on the, your insights on India and comparing that to Africa and, and the work that you've been doing. I appreciate you having me on your, on your show. It's been an amazing 45 minute discussion. And, uh, thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you very much, folks. Until next time, bye. Bye.