About NESTARA LTD
NESTARA Limited is a Kenyan social enterprise, founded two years ago, that is formalizing domestic work so the people who hold up the country’s homes are recognized as professionals. Kenya has more than two million domestic workers, and with no state-sponsored childcare or eldercare, working families depend on them. NESTARA was built to fix a market failure of trust. Families are willing to pay well but need confidence in a worker’s skills and background, while experienced workers have no formal way to prove their record. NESTARA identifies domestic workers with strong experience and verifiable references, trains them through NICHE, its care and hospitality academy, and places them in contracted roles paid above minimum wage. The company earns 56% of its revenue from placement fees charged to families and 42% from training fees.
suggested project & deliverables
NESTARA’s project is centered on scaling through a business-to-business model that grows the employer-sponsored training pipeline at NICHE. Every domestic job placement is on a written contract, retention is strong, and training has grown from about 10% to 42% of revenue in a year. Kenya’s minimum wage for domestic workers is 18,000 shillings, while the average worker earns 10,000 to 12,000, which shows that many families cannot meet the standard or need to see its value. Employers carry part of this cost already: when a domestic worker falls ill or leaves, the parent misses work. NESTARA seeks support from the S-Bize program to research corporate demand for sponsored training cohorts and family benefits that reduce lost working hours, and to design how the offer is packaged, priced, and sold to companies.