Case Studies

A retail store loses a key manager at the start of the busy season.

Soko’s “virtual factory” of 2,300 artisanal workshops distributed around Nairobi, Kenya produced brass, horn, and bone jewelry for a discerning global market. The firm combined a mobile platform with state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to match the most qualified artisans with the right production jobs and perform remote quality checks on completed products. The company had grown quickly, increasing the annual income of its artisans by up to five times and helping dozens of people move out of slums.