The business at a glance
One of Latin America’s most overlooked communities is its domestic workforce. There are an estimated 700,000 domestic workers in Colombia alone - about 9 in 10 of them women, most without contracts, social security, or any protection if they’re injured on the job - and a missed week of work can mean skipped meals, debt, and children’s education at risk.
Hogarelia was founded to change that. It’s an early-stage for-profit online marketplace built around these workers: through the platform, a worker can begin formalising her work autonomously, and build a professional history over time. The ambition is a real rebalance of power - domestic work becoming a dignified career path that lifts people out of precarity and toward greater formality over time, with the wider social benefits that follow.
The groundwork for Hogarelia has been laid: field research, financial model, pitch deck, platform design, and brand are all built. With our support, Hogarelia’s founder, Jonathan Bertrand, will focus on launching the MVP, onboarding his first workers, and developing the business strategy to reach sustainable scale.
Meet the project leader
Jonathan Bertrand is a French social entrepreneur now based in Bogotá. After nearly a decade in the humanitarian sector - working with organisations including KPMG, the Danish Refugee Council, Solidarités International, and the Norwegian Refugee Council across Colombia, Iran, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Central America - he completed an LSE Master’s in Social Business and Entrepreneurship and turned his focus to social enterprise. Hogarelia is the result.
Meet our alumni
Want to see who we’ve supported in past years?
Find the full list of all founders we've worked with since our inception in pages 32–43 of our impact report.