Interview with Ifza Tindall, Co-Founder of Yuno

Yuno is a mission-led social enterprise that aims to match underemployed workers with skilled industries. Our easy to use, gamified psychometric app gathers data on a workers’ personality, interests and values, while our computer programs uncover existing patterns among the existing team of a business. If there is a match between the two, we introduce our employer to a user whose values match that of their own team.

Our focus is on supporting the 6.2 million people in the UK earning below living wage, into industries where they can achieve economic wellbeing. Yuno uses labour market data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to support workers into better economic conditions, and provide skilled industries the talent they need to operate more efficiently.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

Yuno’s founder, an experienced software engineer, had spent years creating software to make repetitive tasks more efficient and require less human effort. This automation, however, has a consequence: the human who once executed those tasks is no longer needed.

PWC reports that 3 million UK blue-collar jobs will be affected by automation by 2025, and in 2020 alone, we saw 125 thousand retail jobs lost. At the same time, skilled industries are less likely to be affected by automation, paying double what the worker may have previously been earning as these industries are suffering from huge skills shortages.

We at Yuno could see the need for workers in one industry, and the mass redundancies in another, and had to find a way to link the two.

What advice would you give to other aspiring female entrepreneurs?

To my fellow aspiring female entrepreneurs, I echo the words of Michele Obama, who tells us that our qualities will take us places that things we can buy or learn cannot. Do not underestimate the things that make you, ‘you’ and do not be afraid of being vulnerable. The challenges we may have faced along the way show others that we are resilient, determined and passionate.

I encourage everyone to share their stories, in one way or another, because there will be another woman who shares your experiences, looking for inspiration to start, and that inspiration might just be you.

What can we hope to see from Yuno in the future?

Our current focus is on supporting workers who have been negatively affected by COVID-19. The past 6 months has been a very difficult time, with many industries suffering, but Yuno aims to work together with the masses of talent in the UK, supporting them back into a secure job, where they feel happy.

The economic and social wellbeing of workers is at the heart of our work, and will continue to be in the future.

For more information visit: www.yuno.uk