Hi there,
Welcome to the 8th edition of Next Capital, where we help you find Africa’s most promising startups—before anyone else does.
Last week, we wrote about the startup turning Africa’s dancefloors into a fitness data goldmine. If you missed it, you can catch up here.
The Backdrop
In a past life, Amos Kimani was a big-time gospel artist in Kenya. To shoot his music videos, he’d have to hire beauticians, move them to wherever he had a shoot, and micro-manage them till they got things right.
For someone who just wanted to praise God and rack up streams, this was tedious. Hiring the right people took forever, and there was no real way of knowing if they were good.
Pretty soon, he met Wathua Kariuki, who would eventually be his co-founder. Wathua had just sold a beauty company(Nice and Lovely) to L’Oreal in an eight-figure deal and was looking for his next thing. When he met Amos, they had the same question:
Why hasn’t someone built an Uber for beauticians yet? because..
Beauty is a big market in Africa
On every corner of every street in Africa, there’s a beauty salon. Whether you’re in Lagos, Accra, or Nairobi.
The average monthly spend on beauty is $15, mostly going to things like:
Hair treatments and styling
Beauty products
Self-care sessions (manicures, pedicures, skin therapies)
This all props up an $87 billion beauty market in Africa.
In East Africa, it’s $26 billion. And in Kenya, it’s $2.4 billion.
That’s where Amos and his co-founder found answers to their question. With an app called Tausi. But first, let’s talk about…
The problem
Like Amos found, beauticians are everywhere, but quality service is scarce.
In a good beauty salon, wait times can be as high as three hours. In other places, you have to deal with rude staff, poor service, and unclean shops.
On the other hand, 60% of beauticians can’t find steady clients, partly due to quality, but also because it’s hard for them to prove their quality. So, customers often have to make choices based on aesthetics, which creates an uneven playing field.
This caps their growth, and some beauticians spend up to 24 months trying to cover their shop costs. Tausi uses the Uber model to make this better.
Here’s how.
Tausi’s Fix
Beauticians sign up on the app and list their services, and users can get on the app and find a beautician close to them. Users pay 20% upfront, and 80% once the work is done. The best part is how Tausi ensures quality.
First, they’ve cut deals with 150+ beauty colleges to get quality beauticians signed up. Then they give them KPIs tied to their service. When they hit these KPIs, they unlock perks like free beauty products, discounted Safe boda rides (up to 35%), and even credit lines for their beauty business.
It’s a two-sided promise → get people the best beauticians on-demand, and make it worthwhile for those beauticians to stick around and do the job right.
So far, it’s been working.
The Money Talk
Tausi makes money in a number of ways
They charge a 20% commission on bookings
They upsell beauty products to beauticians and users
They offer business loans to beauticians and charge a 5% interest
And they help corporate clients (like Safaricom and Ethio Telecom) glam up their ad teams.
Last year, they made $72k in revenue. And they’re on track to do $100k this year.
The user growth has been just as green.
Tausi has done 30,000 bookings to date, and this will likely double by year's end.
It’s signed on 6,000 verified beauticians
And has 32,000 active users.
They’re also building a website service(still in beta) that lets beauticians take bookings via WhatsApp and manage their earnings.
But the coolest part? They’re in talks with one of the biggest beauty brands in the world, Fenty Beauty, to help relaunch their product lines in East Africa. If it works out, it could be huge.
Clearly, there’s a lot to be excited about. But it’s worth asking?
But what could go wrong?
There’s a rising tide of beauty startups in Africa – from BeautyHut to Tui – with similar or adjacent offerings. Competition could become fierce pretty soon.
Review systems are great, but not enough to ensure quality beforehand. But Tausi created the “Tausi Touch” program to help beauticians build higher-quality practices.
These are valid concerns, but Tausi also has a big moat around it.
Data flywheel – They can build loads of data on how people buy and consume beauty services/products, which can be used to upsell other products and bring them to market faster
Verified talent pool – They’re getting their beauticians credentialed and turning them into professionals, putting them a notch above other services in terms of quality.
Corporate beachhead – sticky multi-year contracts (Safaricom, women’s conferences, club chains) give them predictable cash and thousands of individual leads.
Empowerment - Tausi’s not just tech; it’s transformation. Through their training program, they’re equipping disadvantaged women with beauty skills and onboarding them onto the app, turning them into self-sufficient entrepreneurs. It is impact at scale, and it gives Tausi a powerful, mission-driven edge that’s hard to replicate.
The Team
Amos Kimani (Co-founder/CEO): Musician-turned-founder inspired by personal frustration with finding trusted beauty pros on the go. Passionate about building on-demand platforms for Africa.
Wathua Kariuki (Co-founder/COO): 16+ years in the beauty industry, ex–Nice & Lovely (led brand through acquisition by L'Oréal).
Leonard Macharia (Co-founder/CTO): Software architect with deep expertise across fintech and logistics. Leading Tausi’s product and platform scale across borders.
We’re watching this one—hard.
Reply if you want an intro to Amos before Rihanna beats you to it.
And if you’re building something cool we should know about, fill out this form
Till next week! 👋
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