As global companies grapple with rising labour costs, talent shortages, and the complexities of cross-border hiring, an Africa-focused startup is quietly positioning the continent as a dependable hub for remote-ready professionals.
The Mauritius-headquartered startup, Breedj, is an AI-powered global talent marketplace, building a structured bridge between African talent and international employers by doing more than just matching CVs to vacancies.
Instead, the platform ensures that talents are fully prepared, compliant, and operational from the moment they are hired, removing the friction that often discourages companies from sourcing talent across borders.
Founded by Mauritius-based John Benatouil and Morocco-based Nicolas Goldstein, Breedj is responding to a growing global shift toward distributed work, while simultaneously addressing Africa’s long-standing challenge of under-exposure in international hiring markets.
“We’re building the infrastructure of global hiring combining technology, AI, and local compliance to enable companies to recruit international talent as easily as if they are hiring locally,” said co-founder, Goldstein.
“Our differentiator is not just matching CVs to jobs, but ensuring talents are operational, autonomous, and ready to work remotely from day one,” Benatouil explained.
What Is Breedj and How Did It Emerge?
Breedj is the evolution of Talenteum, a platform originally founded in Africa to connect local professionals with international employers. After several years of operational experiences, the founders recognised the need for a more scalable, intelligent, and efficient model.
“After several years operating employer-of-record and remote hiring services, we decided to rebuild the model as a scalable, AI-driven marketplace,” Benatouil said.
This strategic rethink culminated in the formal structuring of Breedj in 2024, following participation in international programmes such as the Stanford Seed Transformation Programme, which helped accelerate the startup’s pivot and refine its long-term vision.
The Core Problems Breedj Is Solving
Breedj was built around two fundamental gaps in the global hiring ecosystem. On one side are international companies seeking global talent but wary of the risks associated with cross-border employment.
“Companies want global talent, but not risk or complexity,” Benatouil noted.
Existing options often force employers to choose between freelance platforms that lack quality control or enterprise EOR solutions that are costly and inflexible.
On the other side is Africa’s vast talent pool, which remains largely underutilised despite strong technical and professional capabilities.
“We unlock access to high-quality global jobs for African professionals, without forced migration,” Goldstein added.
Breedj positions itself precisely at this intersection, reducing risk for employers while increasing credibility and access for African professionals.
How Breedj Operates
Breedj combines multiple functions, talent sourcing, remote readiness validation, compliance, and payroll, into a single platform. Rather than treating talent as gig workers, the startup focuses on structured, long-term remote roles that companies can rely on.
The platform concentrates on roles that can be performed remotely, including customer support, virtual assistance, IT, data, finance, operations, legal support, and other back-office functions.
“Increasingly, AI-augmented roles are also part of our positioning,” Benatouil added, showing the company’s intent to align African talent with future-of-work trends rather than low-value outsourcing.
By handling contracts, legal compliance, and payments, Breedj allows companies to hire across borders without establishing local entities, while ensuring talents are professionally managed and fairly paid.
What Differentiates Breedj from Market Competitors
Breedj deliberately sits between freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr and enterprise EOR providers like Deel, Papaya, and Rippling and pool of others.
According to Benatouil, “Breedj is more structured and compliant than freelancing marketplaces, and more accessible and impact-driven than enterprise EOR solutions.”
This positioning allows the startup to combine the flexibility of freelance platforms with the rigour and compliance expected by serious international employers.
Its Africa-first focus, employability framework, and AI-enabled matching further distinguish it in a crowded global hiring market.
“Our focus on Africa, employability, and AI-enabled matching clearly differentiates us,” Benatouil said.
Breedj’s Market Reach and Capacity
Despite being bootstrapped and built on revenues generated from its services, Breedj has already scaled operations across multiple African countries, including Mauritius, Madagascar, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Rwanda.
On the demand side, it supports companies across Europe, the United Kingdom, and other international markets. Uptake has been driven by structural shifts in the global workforce.
“Uptake has been strong and consistent, driven largely by factors such as talent shortages in Europe, the rising cost of local hiring, and the increased acceptance of remote and distributed teams,” Benatouil explained.
On the supply side, demand from African professionals has been equally strong.
“Many African professionals are actively seeking structured, long-term international opportunities, not just gig work,” he said, with particularly strong traction in customer operations, IT, virtual assistance, and business services.
Expansion Plans and Business Model
Breedj operates on a subscription-based model, charging monthly fees per talent managed. This approach creates predictable, recurring revenue while aligning the company’s incentives with long-term talent success.
“This creates recurring revenue, which is a key part of our long-term strategy as we move toward a SaaS-first model,” Benatouil said.
While still in a growth phase, the startup reports steadily growing revenues and a gradual path toward profitability as platform scale improves.
Looking ahead, Breedj plans to deepen its presence in East and West Africa, expand into more AI-augmented roles, and enhance its platform to support more self-serve hiring for companies.
Why Breedj Matters for African Talent Discovery
Beyond its business metrics, Breedj represents a broader shift in how African talent is positioned in the global economy.
By focusing on readiness, compliance, and long-term employability, the startup challenges outdated perceptions of African professionals as informal or risky hires. Instead, Breedj frames Africa as a continent of capable, remote-ready talent aligned with global work standards.
In doing so, it not only unlocks new opportunities for individuals but also strengthens Africa’s role in the evolving digital and remote-first global workforce.
As global companies increasingly look beyond borders for talent, platforms like Breedj may prove critical in ensuring Africa is not just included, but properly valued, in the future of work.
Talking Points
Breedj occupies a more systemic position in Africa’s talent discovery ecosystem by directly addressing the hardest barriers to global employment, remote readiness, compliance, and cross-border payroll, rather than focusing only on visibility or matching.
Compared to MyArteLab in Nigeria, which is largely a creative-sector marketplace helping photographers and visual artists gain exposure, fair pricing, and trusted payments within a localised framework, Breedj is building full employment infrastructure that allows African professionals to plug seamlessly into international labour markets.
Similarly, ProPath in South Africa takes a niche, sector-specific approach by using AI to help young athletes discover and manage sports career pathways, rather than solving broad workforce access and hiring friction.
In contrast to these vertical or sector-focused platforms, Breedj’s model is broader and more commercially integrated, positioning African talent as operational, compliant, and long-term hires for global companies.
Together, these startups reflect a maturing continent-wide push toward talent discovery, however Breedj stands out for tackling the structural constraints that have historically limited Africa’s participation in the global remote economy.
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