Eden Life’s Monster Home Services Bundle Play in Africa
Eden's promise is to help people in Nigeria, Kenya and the continent say goodbye to house chores forever.
What if I told you the Garden of Eden conflict was about chores? You’d probably be a bit intrigued, right? Okay, let’s just talk about chores first then.
Now there is a lot you can criticise about domestic work. From gender inequality in household chores to its conflict with professional “work,” careers and its impact on a family’s income. It could also be about the inhumane experiences, the women and children-dominated domestic workforce face globally.
But one criticism you shouldn't make blindly is, "why do people need other people to do their house chores for them."
Every home comes with household chores. Every human needs to eat. But, who does the chores and who should be doing them? What is the optimal way to go about this division of labour in the household? How do you effectively stop fighting house work?
Some experts predict that by 2040, 90% of household work will be taken out of human hands by robots. They believe robots, drones, and other home gadgets will take over most household chores. The caveat here is that their study only took into account developed countries.
For developing places like Africa, robots taking over the bulk of household chores seems pretty futuristic. For people in places like Lagos and Nairobi & Cape town, human hands will at this rate continue to perform the bulk of household chores for a long while.
Household Chores are a Bundle
A home is an indispensable possession for humans. It is a place of security, control, belonging, identity, and privacy, amongst other things. It's also a place that provides us with some centring — a place from which we can leave each morning and to which we return in the evening, or vice versa, whichever way your 24 hours is set up.
Once you have a home, it makes sense for you to actively keep it as that place of “centring”. Economically speaking, it can be expensive, but from a business point of view, the home is a bundle of chores that is a severe pain point for many people in our hyper-connected world. Where finding the work-life balance continues to be elusive even as we experiment with Working from Home (WFH) models.
There's an opportunity for lots of value to be captured by innovatively meeting the demand for home-based services. The global on-demand home services market was estimated to be US$281.9 Billion in 2020. By 2027, this market is expected to get to US$4.1 Trillion by 2027.
Outside the numbers, the home service industry is very compelling because it encompasses a bundle of four core jobs; cleaning, laundry, meal prep and home appliance repair/maintenance. These are essential jobs to be done in every household, and ignoring them can leave your home looking like a garbage dump.
Maintaining a home, doing all the household chores, and keeping home appliances in line can be strictly exhausting in this new, screen-facing world we live in. This is why there’s great demand for home-based services, and why people get overwhelmed hunting for the right solution for solving their house chores dilemma.
Domestic Workers, Home Automation & On-Demand Home Service Apps
Chores. Cleaning. Yardwork. All necessary and yet, all unenjoyable. The average person will spend, on the low end, about an hour cleaning a day. Many people solve this pain point through a 3rd party, usually domestic workers (full-time or part-time). Here's the problem though, a lot of us do not have that luxury.
Domestic workers tend to work for private households. And more likely than not, they are women or children.
One in every 25 women in the global workforce is a domestic worker. Female domestic workers cover 80% of the global domestic worker industry. To a large extent, they have contributed significantly to global economic growth and also to other women succeeding in gaining paid work outside the home in increasingly more significant proportions.
Meanwhile, in Africa, domestic workers are often without clear terms of employment. They usually earn low salaries, tend to work long hours and are highly vulnerable to abuse.
As technology continues to eat the world, disrupting industries, the domestic work industry seems destined for disruption. Are domestic workers going to be rendered almost obsolete by technology, or will they be intertwined at a deeper level?
There is no denying that technology helps us with tedious chores and gets things done faster. Leaving us some free time. Washers and dryers, combined washers-dryers, dishwashers, electric blenders, juicers, and mixers, the list is quite long. Robotic vacuum cleaners, automatic floor cleaners, microwaves, coffee makers, food processors, smart fridges and smart home everything. Like I said, a long list.
Smart technology allows you to reduce the amount of time you spend a week cleaning and maintaining outdoor spaces. Devices that automate home chores will not wholly lift that burden but will allow you to keep your home a bit tidier and improve your quality of life. However, a lot of them still need your presence to work optimally.
We can expect more automation in our homes with even more sophisticated gadgets on the horizon. Still, however, we look at domestic work and home automation; domestic workers aren’t going away because of home automation and they shouldn’t either.
I believe that the robot vs man dichotomy can’t thrive in the home service industry just yet because it’s a human-robot future that our world will be built on. I mean, robots are ultimately just extensions of man. Basically another medium of expression.
The use of web and mobile apps for buying goods and services has grown tremendously over the years. And on-demand apps seem to be at the forefront of this growth, providing consumers solutions at their fingertips.
The on-demand model has transformed and modernized the internet by enabling better personalisation and transparency for consumers.
The growth of the ride-hailing and logistics industry has already provided an “on-demand” template that is being applied to the home service industry. Offering an alternative for solving traditional home chores
Other than the usual popular on-demand apps like Uber and Lyft which are based in the ride-hailing and logistics industry, the on-demand model is also penetrating into the home of consumers. With companies like Amazon (Amazon Home Services), Urban Company and Taskrabbit leading the charge.
These on-demand home service apps tend to be an all-in-one portal where consumers can assess home service professionals. These companies offer on-demand domestic workers for household tasks. They provide instant access to “affordable” home services by having tie-ups with companies or individual service providers who offer these services.
These home service apps aren’t just gaining momentum in the west (it’s currently a $600b industry in the US). They are also emerging in India, Mexico, The Middle East, South Africa and Nigeria.
On-demand home service apps, like Urban Company (formerly Urbanclap) and even Amazon Home Services adopt a marketplace model with consumers on one side and service suppliers on another.
Meanwhile, a home-services app in Africa is taking a different approach. Instead of using service suppliers (third-parties), they’ve built their own in-house service supply infrastructure, cutting out third party suppliers. And instead of customers paying a fee for every home task done, they’ve opted for a subscription model.
Enter Eden
If you are always on the go, which is true for a lot of people who live and work in Lagos, and you just don’t have the time to fuss over the homestead as much as you'd like, finding a third party to take care of your home chores might just be a necessity for you. It’s one reason that Eden was launched.
In West Africa, domestic workers who perform the jobs of nannies and maids are usually called house-helps. Vetting house-helps is a challenging endeavour, and the version of what is considered an excellent job by an employer might be different from what the househelp can or might offer. Consequently, this builds up a lack of trust, accountability and inevitably some form of abuse for both parties.
Most of the house helps in Nigeria, and large parts of Africa are often underaged female children. They are brought from villages or neighbouring countries or referred by a “trusted source” to assist in taking care of a home. This househelp industry is also part of the culture that Eden is directly or indirectly fighting against.
Eden is a home service app that takes care of house chores by putting them on autopilot using tech and an assigned home manager. Potentially saving people a lot of time by removing the friction between people and their house chores and the stress that comes with micromanaging house-helps (domestic workers) and taking out the possibility of any form of abuse.
Eden has two sides to it. The human side involves handling your home chores through well-trained home keepers who they call Gardeners. While the digital side (an app) allows you to choose your home needs, monitor the status of your chores, and leave feedback when necessary.
This is quite the value proposition.
Eden is not your usual on-demand home service app. Where the usual home service apps and platforms monetise one-off home-based services, Eden monetises a home service or bundle of home services using customisable subscriptions plans ( that you can change mid-cycle).
The services that Eden currently offers include:
House Cleaning
Laundry
Meals ( With an in-app menu that changes weekly)
Home maintenance
Manicure/Pedicure
Gifting
Eden first launched in Lagos in 2019 and currently only offer house cleaning, laundry, Meals and gifting to its users in Lagos. However the company recently just launched in Kenya and seems to be expanding its service list by adding home maintenance and manicure/pedicure to the mix.
Eden is also forming strategic partnerships. The most interesting, their collaboration with spleetAfrica, a prop-tech startup that offers access to comfortable booking spaces in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. Allowing its users to subscribe daily, monthly, quarterly, and bi-annually for a home.
Beyond the Garden, What’s Next?
The least subscription plan that Eden offers is N10,000 (~$24) which can either cover laundry for the month or home cleaning for the month. To get both services on Eden, you'll have to shell out x2 that amount. To have meals delivered weekly, have your laundry done and get your home cleaned. You'll have to pay around ~N50000 (×5).
Price is a touchy subject for a lot of African consumers and it’s fair to say that Eden has done a great job creating fairly sustainable customizable plans for its users. It seems to be cracking product offerings that merit a premium at scale. Or at least it seems like it will at least fundamentally change the unit economics of the home service industry in Africa. And it is doing this not just by simply injecting a service into a pre-existing transaction but by having a good value proposition and an innovative delivery model.
While Eden’s seems to be in expansion mode, it still needs to build network effects. One way to do this is by getting a sizable chunk of the eat-out industry’s market share in Africa. And as more users use the app to get their meals, they’ll start to use the app to get their other household chores done.
The thing about a platform business like Eden’s is that making them work at scale can be rather resourced intensive. You also need loads of people willing to congregate around it and Eden seems to have that going for them with a lot of rave reviews about them on social media.
On-demand technologies and practices are a great model. In that, they promise fixed pricing and “high-quality” service by measuring customer satisfaction. But this just gets the job started in the digital home service sector.
There are a couple of companies that you can use to get someone to get over to your home and try to get your house chores done. But it can take too much time and it can sometimes feel like you aren't getting value for money and can feel too unpredictable. While a lot of on-demand companies have a focus on saving consumers time and money (worthy problems to solve) they forgo to address s crucial pain point: unpredictability.
When it comes to their home and the jobs to be solved in them people are not just looking to save time and reduce stress. They are looking for companies that can gain a good understanding of their home in order to build solutions that address the specific needs of their home. Eden is doing this better than any home service company in the market currently. They’re creating a comprehensive customer experience by removing the unpredictability for its users by not just offering great customer satisfaction but by having the willingness to evaluate and alter their operational processes on the fly as they encounter issues.
This is why Eden has been considered to be one of the African startups that have the potential to be a super app by using the home bundle as a base.
As Eden builds a world where people can easily manage their homes. If they are successful, they can go on to bundle in more niches like on-demand healthcare and on-demand transportation and logistics into their home service base. But getting to this point will be no small feat.
None of what Eden does is easy. There’s a limited supply of high-quality home service talent, especially in Africa. And you are more likely to find tons of lower quality supply. That's why Eden has opted to build out their own service/talent infrastructure themselves.
I consider the broader vision for Eden is for anyone to use Eden to have a better home and live a better life.
However, it is important to remember that a business is more than its technology & the product. It needs a thriving distribution channel & a crazy-successful customer acquisition machine. Without this, you remain a hidden gem even if you have visionary approaches to the problem you're trying to solve.
If someone is going to crack this home service sector that some claim has the potential to be larger than the ad tech industry. Then that business is likely going to be a monster. While Eden has the potential to become this monster, can it do so from Africa? will it take a cue from Flutterwave and look to expand to the US and other markets outside Africa?
Only time will tell.