The systemic bias in global hiring did not dawn on Obinna Umeh until he’d lost 17 freelance contracts on Upwork after clients learned he was based in Nigeria. The final blow came in 2020 when he lost a $50,000 contract from Washington because he couldn’t receive payment through BILL, the client’s payment system that required a U.S. Social Security number.
A growth strategist, Umeh had always considered himself the ideal candidate whenever he sat for contract interviews, but his confidence was tested by repeated contract declines and payment barriers. Those experiences pushed him to investigate how widespread the problem was. He found that many African talent faced similar struggles—lost contracts, delayed payments, and outright nonpayment—while global businesses complained that remote hires often underperformed or failed to deliver.
“I spoke with a lot of talents, mainly every week with different complaints of doing a job, not getting paid, and several other issues,” said Umeh.
In late 2023, determined to tackle the global hiring barriers, Umeh and co-founder Emmanuel Ajayi went on a customer discovery drive across Africa, and some countries in Asia and Latin America. They spoke with talents, founders, and HR managers in emerging markets to understand both sides of the hiring challenge. The insights from that journey is what led them to founding Growwr. Both co-founders Umeh and Ajayi are now CEO and CTO respectively.
Launched in 2024, Growwr is an AI-powered work management platform that helps businesses find and manage vetted talent faster and securely for freelance gigs, contractual projects, and full-time roles. Its platform allows businesses to create tasks, manage projects end-to-end, track milestones, and securely pay talent.
At its launch, it initially focused on hiring for marketing roles before expanding into fields such as web development and engineering, video editing, customer support, and content development. Umeh says the narrow start was deliberate. “We wanted to understand what founders and business leaders really look for, not just skills, but culture fit, reliability, and ethics,” Umeh stated. He noted that the early focus informed the platform’s AI workflow, which now evaluates candidates far beyond a résumé.
The global staffing and recruitment market was valued at $757.6 billion in 2023 and is projected to hit $2.03 trillion by 2031. Yet Africa accounts for only 2.2%, valued at $16.5 billion in 2023 and expected to grow to $32.18 billion by 2031 at a CAGR of 8.7%, driven by digital platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and LinkedIn, that simplify cross-border hiring for businesses.
These platforms, however, still leave businesses with the extra work of vetting candidates and conducting multiple interview rounds. Growwr uses a three-layer AI engine comprising an AI Crawler, an AI Behavioral Engine, and an AI Matching Algorithm to build trust in its vetting and cuts hiring time to within six hours.
The platform claims that it has vetted over 19,000 talent and helped businesses across 13 countries hire smarter. “The AI will trigger the job to the most deserving talent and the hiring client has a time frame of six hours to either accept or decline,” Umeh said.
Making talent ready-made for hiring
Growwr’s AI system handles all hiring processes from background checks to behavioural interviews. Its processes automate vetting and productivity management through each of its AI layers. The AI model, built on proprietary workflows rather than generic ChatGPT prompts, has delivered over 90% accuracy in talent matching across 5,000 completed jobs, Umeh claimed.
The platform requires talent to sign up and collects basic details, including skills, work experience, and portfolio links, then activates what Umeh calls the “AI Crawler,” which it describes as a spy. The AI layer checks for inconsistencies, flagging red signals such as exaggerated work years or unverifiable education claims.
Its second layer involves an AI Behavioural Interviewer, a conversational model that interacts directly with talent. Trained on behavioural and situational datasets, the AI conducts a simulated interview to gauge work ethic, culture fit, and communication skills.
“We built it to ask personalised questions based on the person’s work expertise and also the red flags that we have pointed out during the first stage,” Umeh said. “It brings that into play so the talent can indeed qualify if there are any errors there. We also train the model to infer work ethics in terms of chemistry and culture fit on their choices of words, how they respond, and how they speak about their past work experiences.” Talent who attain a 90% score are onboarded on the platform.
The AI Matching Algorithm then connects businesses with the most relevant, verified talent. Once matched, both sides can use the platform to create tasks, manage projects, share files, and settle payments securely.
For enterprises, Growwr even offers custom AI hiring portals that integrate internal KYC, interviews, and performance tracking. “We sign six-month contracts with companies that use Growwr to manage contract hiring,” he said. “If after two or three months they want to swap that talent for an alternative, they will do that for free.”
Joshua Firima, CEO of KrosAI, said Growwr has redefined his hiring process, cutting the time to fill roles from a month to less than five days. “It has transformed how we hire,” Firima said, adding that the platform’s built-in project management tool has saved his team both time and “cost to pay for extra tools like Trello or Jira. “We’ve completed about five projects with the talents I hired from the platform.”
Business model and traction
Growwr earns through commissions and enterprise contracts. For project-based hiring, it charges 5% from the business and 15% from the talent, earning roughly 20% per transaction. For B2B clients, it runs on customisable six-month contracts averaging $1,800, which is subjected to change over time.
With over $1.5 million in payouts, Umeh said its global footprint spans Africa, North America, Europe, and Asia, with most active users from Nigeria, South Africa, the US, and Germany.
Umeh doesn’t see direct competitors in Africa, at least not with the same technology depth. It considers LinkedIn and Jobberman in the hiring space, adding that businesses still rely on their networks for recommendations. “Most people who are hiring always ask their network if they know somebody they can hire, because of trust.”
Growwr is currently closing a pre-seed round to scale its operations in key markets, especially the United States, where Umeh sees massive potential.
Partnerships are another cornerstone of the plan. The startup is exploring partnerships with HR platforms like SeamlessHR and PaidHR to enable companies to hire directly within their existing payroll systems. It’s also in talks with enterprise clients in Egypt and West Africa and working with VCs and accelerators like Founder Institute to support portfolio companies with smarter hiring.
In five years, Umeh envisions Growwr as the backbone of a new digital labour economy, one that elevates Africa’s role in the global workforce. “Africa has the youngest population in the world and we want to make the continent the leading source of skilled talent.”
Mark your calendars! Moonshot by is back in Lagos on October 15–16! Meet and learn from Africa’s top founders, creatives & tech leaders for 2 days of keynotes, mixers & future-forward ideas. Get your tickets now: moonshot..com
