Hakeem started up his own business as a side-hustle while he was still working in a relocation start-up in Singapore. Initially an aircon servicing company, this business would grow into ServiceBack.com, a first-of-its-kind platform in Singapore to offer cashback for customers looking for home and renovation services.
While there’s never a best time to start a business, there may be some “not-so-best” times when you can do this – such as during the heights of a pandemic which would turn out to be Singapore’s worst economic recession on record. This was exactly when Hakeem left his marketing role to work on ServiceBack full-time in May 2020.
Unpleasant Aircon Servicing Encounter Led To Starting A Business
He started his aircon servicing business in January 2020 after he faced a problem all Singaporeans would have at some point – when his aircon was not cold enough.
“One day, I had to have my aircon fixed. The guys came down pretty fast, and on the spot, they were demanding $250 to fix a bunch of things I didn’t really understand. So, I told them to just go ahead with it. I wasn’t really left with a choice. Either I pay the assessment fee or I get someone else to come, and there’s no guarantee that (the new) guy is going to quote something less.”
This helplessness spurred him to think about a better way that the industry could function. When he was trying to learn more about the industry, “I found out that the price I was quoted was five times inflated to what you would pay on ServiceBack today.”
Hakeem even went back to speak to the guy who initially serviced his aircon, not to pick a quarrel but to continue his learning journey, and realised that “he was just trying to hit his sales quota.”
Problems Potentially Solved By A Cashback System
As a victim of unethical practices in the industry, Hakeem sees that a matching platform relying on positive reviews would naturally do a better job in being transparent in the industry.
Another major problem all vendors in the industry were facing is very high customer acquisition cost. Hakeem shares that “the vendors have to fork out 30% to 40% of (their price) just to acquire (a) user”. He says that this is not sustainable and “it’s not fair, the technicians do all the work, but they only walk away with (about) 60% of the whole amount (that they charge customers)”.
While this is the case, Hakeem also explains that customers would always be the ones ultimately forking out for the higher customer acquisition costs. As different vendors bid up online ad prices, marketing and customer acquisition costs go up, and this would have to be reflected in higher charges.
This was the light-bulb moment for Hakeem and his co-founders: “what if we created a bypass, where people would come to (our) platform and be matched to a service provider. What (the service providers) would have spent on customer acquisition would be shared with the customers as cashback”.
It isn’t just theory. Just surpassing its one-year mark in, ServiceBack’s revenue has already grown to over $2 million today. Moreover, ServiceBack is also seeing 1 in 4 customers return for aircon servicing and a 10% cross-sell rate over the past six months. This has also translated into over 120 positive reviews online.
Armed with this traction, Hakeem is expanding ServiceBack into Hong Kong and Taiwan – explaining that they’re quite similar to Singapore and one of the other co-founders also has huge experience in these two cities.
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In this edition of 5 Questions With…, we caught up with Hakeem to learn more about his entrepreneurship journey.
Dinesh Dayani (Dinesh): Why did you think it was a good idea to start your first business in the midst of a pandemic and what would become the worst economic recession in Singapore’s history!?
Hakeem SA (Hakeem): ServiceBack was only formalised in May 2020. But to be fair, we started the aircon servicing business in January 2020. So, we started first and then the first case of COVID-19 was reported.
Also, we were gaining good traction and the opportunity was there. If we had kicked off the aircon servicing business in January and it didn’t pick up then I wouldn’t have left my job to work on it full-time.
Some things also worked in our favour during COVID-19. Most people are working from home and just being at home a lot more. Naturally, they are using their aircon more, and this means it’s breaking down at twice the speed. They’re also buying more aircons and servicing their aircons more. Being stuck at home and staring at the same four walls every day, you may also start finding things problems that you never saw before or have a preference for change – maybe seeing that your walls need a fresh coat of paint.
Dinesh: You were side-hustling even while holding a full-time job. With the current economic climate and digitalisation of the world only making it easier, do you think every single employee should be thinking about a side-hustle?
Hakeem: Not everyone will want a side-hustle.
It really depends on your hunger for it and what you want to do. You can get satisfaction and fulfilment in different ways, and if you’re a bit like me and you want to push yourself a lot more, then you can explore a bunch of other things. Learn a few new skills in entirely different fields. You would gain a certain understanding that you wouldn’t have if you did it.
You could also be happy with just doing your job.
Dinesh: Recently, Tech in Asia ran a piece on the NOC mafia in the Singapore start-up scene. You’re another one from the programme. How did it prepare you to become an entrepreneur?
Hakeem: The biggest part of NOC is really the huge network effect, and with it, the people you meet and the ideas you get exposed to along the way. More so than the specific internships you do in Stockholm, New York, Helsinki, Israel or, in my case, Mumbai, India.
One of my mentors was a co-founder in the CSR company I was interning at in Mumbai. She was an Australian lady who I got to spend a lot of time with, and quite a fair bit of (her thought process) rubbed off on me. Sometimes it was about just going with your gut feel – knowing what you got to do and following it.
My personal NOC experience was in 2013 – about 8 years ago. The “Mafia” was not really so established yet. But it was still a fulfilling experience. It was also during a rickshaw ride in India with a fellow intern from the programme that we were having a conversation and I realised that I wanted to build something that would have an impact on masses of people. It was one of the times where it was a lot clearer to me.
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Some of the biggest and most well-known businesses in the world today are platforms. Which are the platform businesses that inspired you to build ServiceBack.com?
Hakeem: It was pretty cool how Airbnb first entered the scene and offered a totally different take on a very very traditional industry. The ability for one start-up or one product to have such an impact on the masses is pretty astounding.
Of course, that’s something I aspire towards for ServiceBack.
Dinesh: One advice to aspiring entrepreneurs who want to build a platform business connecting service providers to consumers?
Hakeem:
Go jer, don’t scared.
This is a Malay term that means put your fears aside and just go for it. Sometimes, you got to rely on your gut feel and just give it a shot. Even if it doesn’t work out, so be it.
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