In a move aimed at reshaping how everyday services are accessed across African cities, South African startup Andi On Demand has launched a mobile-first services marketplace designed to connect customers with vetted plumbers, electricians, cleaners, and technicians, starting in Gauteng.
The platform targets one of the continent’s most informal and fragmented economic sectors, home and business services, by replacing unreliable word-of-mouth referrals and WhatsApp networks with a structured, accountable digital system.
According to Andi On Demand’s associate for operations and partner onboarding, Kapenda Chapeshamano, the company is building “simple, practical infrastructure that helps service providers access work more consistently, while giving customers a more reliable way to find help”.
This sounds importantly helpful as smartphone adoption continues to rise but access to trusted service labour remains uneven.
What You Should Know About Andi On Demand
Andi On Demand positions itself as more than a listings platform. At its core, it is a marketplace that actively matches customers with service providers based on verified skills and service categories, rather than leaving users to navigate long directories or informal contacts.
The startup focuses on structured onboarding, ensuring that providers are vetted before joining the platform, and embeds ratings and reviews to promote accountability after each job.
This approach is intended to professionalise services work without stripping away the flexibility that many independent workers rely on.
As Chapeshamano explains, “Across African cities, skilled service providers exist, but access to work is still largely informal,” a reality the startup believes technology can meaningfully improve.
Why Africa’s Services Sector Remains a Structural Challenge
Across much of Africa, home and business services like many services operate outside formal systems.
Jobs are typically secured through personal referrals, neighbourhood recommendations, or WhatsApp groups, methods that often lead to trust gaps, inconsistent service quality, and wasted search time for households and small businesses.
This informality persists despite widespread smartphone usage, creating inefficiencies on both sides of the market. Customers struggle to verify competence and reliability, while service providers face irregular work and limited opportunities for growth.
Andi On Demand is explicitly targeting this structural gap, recognising that the problem is not a lack of skilled labour, but the absence of reliable systems to connect supply with demand at scale.
How Andi Is Differentiating Itself From Directory Platforms
Unlike directory-style platforms that merely aggregate contact details, Andi On Demand is emphasising active market coordination.
The company highlights clearer service-category matching, formal onboarding processes, and post-job accountability through user feedback as key differentiators.
This model is designed to introduce consistency and trust without imposing rigid employment structures.
As noted in the Fintech Associates of Kenya commentary, Andi is attempting to “professionalise informal work without killing the flexibility that many independent providers depend on”.
This is a balance that has proven difficult for many platforms operating in similar spaces across Africa n markets.
The Bigger Opportunity Beyond Job Matching
While the immediate value proposition centres on making services easier and safer to access, the long-term opportunity extends much further.
If Andi On Demand successfully operates as a true services marketplace, it could help workers build verifiable professional identities, generate ongoing demand, and establish clearer pricing norms.
Over time, the platform could also unlock additional services such as training, tools, financing, insurance, and digital payments, leveraging job history and performance data to support providers’ economic stability.
As the Fintech Associates of Kenya observed, once trust and job data are established, the platform could evolve into a broader infrastructure layer for informal services work.
Why Gauteng Is a Strategic Starting Point
Launching first in Gauteng reflects a cautious and pragmatic growth strategy. Two-sided marketplaces face well-known execution risks, including maintaining service quality, handling disputes, and ensuring sufficient demand density in early markets.
Concentrating on a single, economically active region allows Andi On Demand to refine operations, build trust, and achieve scale locally before expanding into other African markets with similar informal-services dynamics.
As the commentary notes, achieving balance between customers and service providers early on will be critical to the platform’s long-term success.
Talking Points
Andi On Demand’s approach reflects a clear understanding of one of Africa’s most persistent urban market failures, the disconnect between abundant skilled labour and reliable access to that labour.
By prioritising vetting, structured onboarding, and accountability over simple listings, the startup is addressing trust and consistency, two issues that informal referral systems and WhatsApp networks cannot reliably solve at scale.
However, its success will hinge less on the elegance of the platform and more on execution in the field, particularly maintaining service quality, resolving disputes quickly, and sustaining enough demand to keep providers engaged.
The long-term vision of layering financing, insurance, or training onto the marketplace is compelling, but only realistic if Andi first proves it can balance both sides of the market in Gauteng.
If it succeeds, Andi On Demand could become more than a convenience app, it could evolve into critical infrastructure for professionalising informal services work across African cities without undermining the flexibility that makes the sector viable.
_______________________
Bookmark Techparley.com for the most insightful technology news from the African continent.
Follow us on X/Twitter @Techparleynews, on Facebook at Techparley Africa, on LinkedIn at Techparley Africa, or on Instagram at Techparleynews
