HEROLINE

Manage your energy and time. Power up with HERoline, the line that links you to extra sets of helping hands on Domestic Care, Housekeeping, Personal Care and Grooming Services from skilled Filipinas.

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THE PROBLEM

Since 2006, Asian women’s overall labor force participation is below 50%, a downtrend that has continued since then. Despite this, 64% of these women workers are employed in the informal sector— leaving them with low-paid, highly vulnerable jobs, and no social protection.

In the Philippines, the female labor force participation rate is at 53.7%, a great number in itself. However, 6.6 MILLION WOMEN WORKERS ARE STILL EMPLOYED IN THE INFORMAL SECTOR. Furthermore, unpaid work and domestic care such as housekeeping, caregiving, among others, is also highly feminized and taking on the bulk of this work often carries a penalty of not being able to have a full-time job with a decent wage, not being able to accumulate a pension, and not getting all of the benefits that come from formal sector employment.

These kinds of work are often undervalued, however, these make up the community, keep homes intact, and are solid foundations on which the society sits.

The increasing presence of women in the workforce can have significant benefits for economic growth, but neither economic growth nor increasing education appears to be sufficient to pull women into the formal economy labor force — underlying the need for more efforts to strengthen women’s economic empowerment in the Asia-Pacific Region.

To promote decent work for women, there needs to be a comprehensive and integrated strategy that eliminates the negative aspects of informality, while preserving the significant job creation and income generation potential of the informal economy. It should promote the protection and incorporation of workers from the informal economy to the formal economy.

This is where HEROLINE can further accelerate the integration of Filipino women in the workforce, especially from the informal economy into the mainstream economy.

THE SOLUTION

What is HEROLINE? HEROLINE is a call-for-help mobile application where users can avail Domestic Care, Housekeeping, Personal Care and Grooming Services that women are recognized for.

How does it work? HEROLINE allows consumers to call for help for their Domestic Care, Housekeeping, Personal Care and Grooming needs. The user can choose the service provider based on information such as the name, ratings and cost of the services of the service provider. Once a service has been selected, the user will need to complete information based on the requirement of the service. This includes date, time and location among others. Users will then choose their mode of payment to secure the booking. The payment shall be charged only when the service has been completed. The request can be done on demand or scheduled regularly.

Who is the target market? Service-oriented apps such as Super Apps have become extremely popular in the Philippines due to the large number of services they provide to users. The working population has an increasing willingness to pay for products, services, and more to save time, thereby relying heavily on mobile apps for their daily needs.

At present, there is a 40.659 Million available market of working professionals in the Philippines, and 310 Million super app service users in Southeast Asia alone— a large greenfield opportunity for HEROLINE to scale in the whole Asia-Pacific region.

Specifically, our target consumers are aged 25 - 40 from middle to upper class families situated at key cities and prime estates in the Philippines, who are now dependent on cab hailing and food delivery platforms, online banking and e-commerce among others, by using the internet and their smartphones.

How can it help underrepresented women and consumers alike? HEROLINE opens users to a roster of women service providers that they can trust to help accomplish real life and work demands. Users get an extra hand on day-to-day life all while getting these services from women who are not given much professional opportunity but are skilled enough to fill this gap on the consumer end.

In creating more decent jobs, HEROLINE eliminates the negative aspects of informality, while preserving the significant job creation and income generation potential of the informal economy. Fully capitalizing on the female labor force; women can spur growth and development, thereby promoting the protection and incorporation of female workers in the informal economy into the mainstream economy.

Too often, we tell women to enter male-dominated fields, but women need not prove themselves. HEROLINE recognizes them as heroes for all that they do— rethinking, redistributing, and redoing opportunities that can go a long way in making sure that women have access to decent work— whether traditional or not.

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