JEDDAH, 15 June 2006 — Any service you need at your house is only a phone call away. With women juggling between work, home and social life they find themselves stressed, short of time and unable to meet all their daily to-do list.
Young businesswoman Wafa Banaja, out of love for helping people, found a need for providing home-delivered service. Whether it is groceries, hairdresser, water tanker, plumber, food orders from a restaurant or just picking up a dress from a particular store, Naam 911 service brings it to your home for a small fee.
Working women, women without drivers or women unable to leave the house seem to be the most to benefit from this service, but husbands too are thankful for it because it saves them the trouble.
“My logo is ‘my service is serving you’,” said Banaja to Arab News. She began her business almost two months ago and the response has been positive. She already has a database of customers who rely on her for their groceries, water tankers and any other regular service they need for their house. She has an office where she meets with potential service providers — plumbers, carpenters, cleaners, photographers — and tests their work-quality, legal status in the country and establish an understanding with them. These are usually people who work for themselves or just started their business and she takes her commission for bringing them customers. With places like groceries and hair salons, she tries their service and compares prices. Her fee for delivering items is measured by the distance covered. After some initial problems, she learned to take half the purchase money in advance if the total is estimated to be over SR150.
She plans to have a marketing campaign soon through e-mail, SMS and of course word-of-mouth. She is working on creating a website which will have a grocery list that people can check and e-mail her their orders. Her working hours are from 10 a.m. to 12 midnight weekdays and to 2:30 a.m. on weekends, taking orders over the cell phone number dedicated for this service (0500777773).
These are long hours but until now she has not felt pressured or missing out on her own social life. “I carry the cell phone with me all the time with a pen and paper ready to take orders,” she said.
She promises to deliver within half an hour unless the place is far. She is working alone now but perhaps soon she would need an assistant. She has two drivers taking care of deliveries. “I depend on the drivers completely and thank God I have reliable and efficient drivers. Once they allow women to drive, I’ll be the third driver delivering the items,” she said.
Most of those benefiting from her are working women but widows and women unable to leave the house also use the service. The most asked for at-home service so far is hairdressers and masseuse. She had calls from men too and she found them to be overall very nice except for the few harassers whom she knew how to handle.
The men usually want someone to take care of water tankers, traffic violations and other time-consuming errands. Ironically, it is women whom she found a bit difficult to deal with. She was also disappointed with how some of the women talked to her but “this is business and I don’t take anything personal.”
So the next time you are panicking over unexpected guests or a plumbing problem or running an errand, all you need is to dial 0500777773.
