Hi HN, weâre Yasir and Zain introducing InstaKin to you (https://www.instakin.com). Weâre a platform to help immigrant communities manage tasks in their home countries.
Every year, 250M migrants send $550B back home to pay for tasks for themselves and their families. Migrants far away from their native countries are dependent on family friends or unknown vendors to make decisions on their behalf. What many folks donât know is that it is common for these funds to get misused, or for migrants to send funds to a vendor back home and receive poor service or get cheated.
Zain and I are originally from Pakistan and have been living in the US and Europe for 12 years. We have regularly sent funds back home to pay for tasks for ourselves and family members. Whether it is for paying home bills or a home renovation, we have done it all â just like millions of other migrants in the US â and experienced all the problems: funds getting misused, vendors pushing for advance payments and then disappearingâŚyou name it and we have seen it. This got us thinking about a platform where we could connect migrants with vendors back home â something to reduce misuse of funds and ensure that vendors perform tasks as agreed.
We talked to hundreds of migrants from India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Uganda, and more, and found that lack of access to reliable vendors and misuse of remittance funds back home are common problems. Just last week, we came across a migrant from Senegal living in the USA who mentioned the same challenge.
Initially we operated on WhatsApp to receive orders from migrant customers and also get their feedback. Thousands of migrants contacted us within the first few months of launching our startup. That validation convinced us to build a full productâa solution for migrants built by migrants. We have focused on two key features: (1) provide migrants with access to services back home, and (2) pay vendors based on milestones to eliminate payments fraud.
Historically, companies focusing on the migrant community have pushed for making it easier to send remittances back home easily though even today it can cost between 2-8% just to remit funds. Our key insight, though, is that money transfer is not enough. It is only transactional. Whatâs needed is to ensure last-mile fulfillment. With InstaKin, migrants donât send funds back home âblindlyâ hoping that things will get done â you pay for fulfillment directly.
Migrants use us to do things like: hiring a ârunnerâ to manage last-mile tasks for their aging parents back home; connecting to a vendor for verification and attestation of educational documents; ordering personalized gifts and having them delivered; paying contractors for home renovation projects.
We started off with helping Pakistani migrants but our goal is to become the platform of choice for migrants globally. The best part is that while we were reaching out to Pakistani migrants, we started getting requests from other communities (Indian and Bangladeshi migrants).
Weâve been surprised at how strong immigrant networks are globally. When we launched, we thought we would receive orders from migrants in a specific city or location only. Turns out that is not true. We have had referrals from all over the world (example: a migrant customer living in London referred us to a migrant living in Chicago who referred us to a migrant living in Singapore). We hope what we are building will help migrants not just from one country but from everywhere in days to come.
We would love to hear back from the community! If you are a migrant yourself, please share your experiences with us and feel free to reach out.
38 minutes ago by neither_color
Have you considered Latin-America too? My last living grandparent gets remittance pick ups, house chores, medication pick ups and all sorts of odd jobs like home renovations done in much the same way you describe, though it's through trusted word-of-mouth recommendations from other villagers.
"Miguel can do this for you, he's so and so's son we can trust him"
I think this is a brilliant idea and wish you well.
11 hours ago by shehryarrr
First love seeing more Pakistani founders! And second - this is super interesting (I'm a first generation kid - parents also came from Pakistan) my parents basically route this all through trusted family right now, have property back home they manage, and this could have made everything WAY simpler.
Congrats on the launch and excited to see where this goes!
10 hours ago by anovikov
My question - why do they keep property back there? Are rental yields in Pakistan very high?
5 hours ago by khanzain
It is also a mindset of many immigrants: always have a backup plan. My parents have lived outside of Pakistan for over 40 years and recently moved to the USA. In all that time they always had a home back in Pakistan and kept investing in more property. I am sure this is the case with immigrants from most other countries also.
5 hours ago by H8crilA
I am a younger immigrant and plan on doing exactly that.
One big part of the "oh shit, let's go back" plan is that it's usually so much cheaper to set things in your country of origin. Some real estate, some investments and you're set for life for a fraction of what it costs in a more expensive country. Or, alternatively, you can see this as an arbitrage: get income in a high income country, spend it in a low income country. For example, just three of my monthly salaries are larger than the median net worth back home. Think if you wouldn't try to exploit such massive inequality yourself.
9 hours ago by alex_smart
I don't know specifically about Pakistan, but at least in India the returns on real estate are very good, especially in second-tier cities.
So many people, only so much land. Rising incomes and steady urbanization. Yada yada yada.
Also, part of it is just culture. I know that people in my parents' generation are not very comfortable investing in the stock market. Real estate is seen as a safe investment with a steady, if low, rental yield.
10 hours ago by wu_187
It's way cheaper to retire back in the home country after you've made your money in the states. A side benefit is that you can rent out the property before retirement which nets you a small income and keeps the property maintained. My in-laws own about a dozen properties in the Philippines, half of which they rent out, and a couple are being used by their kids. Collectively they make enough from the rentals to get by.
9 hours ago by shehryarrr
It's not a rental but the returns on just the plots of land have been good. Their original idea was to retire back home and build a family compound. That's changed since but they still have some of the properties. More and more of the country is getting modern developments and so the return on these has been pretty good.
13 hours ago by debarshri
I think it can expand well beyond helping immigrants. For instance, I am going relocate to another country, may be your service help me organize various like apartments, legal documents etc. Being an immigrant, I understand the problem. Very excited for you guys.
12 hours ago by yshirazi
Thank you so much. Yes expanding into expat/relocation related audiences is a big opportunity too.
10 hours ago by debarshri
In a long run, are you guys going to be HQ-ed in Pakistan?
5 hours ago by notsureaboutpg
Post-COVID, software services may not need a real-world HQ
3 hours ago by koopuluri
Wow! This is an incredible problem to tackle. Iâve faced this problem in the past and I think thereâs a larger scope of just being able to effectively perform tasks remotely - in a different country.
I live between India and the US, and just being able to help me easily pay bills, send goodies to my parents and friends in India, etc. would be super valuable. Right now, Iâd have to be up at the right time, hope my India phone number will work fine (oftentimes I wonât receive SMSs on it when Iâm in the US) to be able to do these things.
I have to rely on friends back home to do these chores and tasks and makes me feel like Iâm burdening them.
4 hours ago by exporectomy
Fantastic. Not just 3rd world countries but even migrants from western countries need runners and trusted helpers to do simple in-person tasks. I know a migrant from America who had to fly back home simply to get a criminal record from the police station and take it to the embassy. I've personally asked family members to do this sort of thing but it's unreliable and bad for relationships.
11 hours ago by foolinaround
Congrats on the launch! Would be very useful!
Some feedback: 1) While it is awesome that you will be doing all the communication with the contractors/vendors, it would give additional confidence to know who is actually doing the tasks 2) There should be community feedback on the vendor/task. Having it available in public would increase our confidence, for example, i might be willing to use your service for visa related tasks but not necessarily for building maintenance 3) Rather than country service, it should be city-specific. 4) Allow users to recommend vendors -who they have personally vetted 5) If I am ordering food today via zomato, etc in India for my parents, it asks for OTP pin etc prior to placing the order, can you explain how this workflow would be achieved? This is currently my most common task.
5 hours ago by khanzain
Great feedback. In our workflow, as soon as a task request is submitted via the app, the customer (immigrant) is matched with a vendor back home. The customer will know by name which vendor they are matched with and can even collaborate with the vendor through a messaging feature. If the customer wants more info they can view vendor details and bio within the app also.
In your point #5, not sure exactly what you are asking but in our app you pay directly through the app using a credit card - payment verification is done through the payment gateway provider.
3 hours ago by foolinaround
in this case, i would have an US credit card, whereas Zomato requires an indian credit, along with an OTP pin sent to the phone number linked to the credit card.
6 hours ago by nell
Why didn't I think if this before??? It has been a pain point to me as an immigrant. Wishing you guys good luck!
3 hours ago by mastazi
I'm a migrant and in hindsight this is such an obvious problem! So many times I had to ask relatives in my home country if they could please get some paperwork done for me or some other task. I even thought "I wonder what would I do if I didn't have any relatives". This is a great idea, best of luck!
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