KAYA is building for the market between DIY and professional services
A Finland-based startup is developing a marketplace for the practical tasks that are too small for traditional service arrangements, yet still difficult, inconvenient or time-consuming to manage alone.
There is a familiar gap in everyday life.
A cabinet needs assembling. A few boxes need carrying downstairs. Something has to be collected across town. A storage room needs organising. An event needs two extra hands for a couple of hours.
The task is real, but the options are often surprisingly limited.
Do it yourself. Ask someone you know. Search through different service providers. Post in a local group and hope the right person sees it.
KAYA is being built for the space in between.
The Finland-based startup is developing a local task marketplace designed to connect people who need practical help with people nearby who have the time and ability to provide it.
Rather than organising the marketplace around a single profession or service category, KAYA starts with a simpler question:
What do you need help with?
The tasks that do not fit neatly anywhere
Digital services have made certain parts of everyday life remarkably convenient.
Food can arrive at the door in minutes. A taxi can be ordered from a phone. Professional cleaners, movers, contractors and other specialists can be booked when the job calls for them.
But many smaller tasks sit somewhere between a professional service and a personal favour.
They may take only an hour or two. They may happen only once. And they may not require specialist qualifications at all.
Individually, these tasks can seem insignificant.
Collectively, KAYA sees a fragmented layer of everyday demand that has never been particularly easy to organise.
Matching need with available time
On one side is someone who needs something done.
On the other may be a student with a free afternoon, a professional with time on the weekend, or simply someone nearby who is capable of doing the task and interested in earning from it.
The difficulty is often not whether the right person exists.
It is finding them.
KAYA is being built around that connection.
“The help is often already there — it’s just disconnected from the person who needs it,” says Jessa, CGO of of Lärosn Partners Oy. “We want to make that connection easier, so a small everyday need doesn’t have to become a complicated search.”
Users will be able to post practical tasks and set a budget. Taskers can see suitable opportunities and choose tasks that fit their availability and capabilities.
Potential use cases range from furniture assembly, organising and errands to moving assistance, pickups, simple home help and light event support.
The principle is intentionally broad: the marketplace follows the task rather than forcing every need into a predefined profession.
Not a replacement for professional services
The distinction matters.
KAYA is not being developed as an alternative to skilled tradespeople or established professional service providers.
Work that requires professional qualifications, licences, specialist expertise or regulated services belongs with the appropriate professionals.
Instead, KAYA focuses on the practical jobs around them — the relatively straightforward tasks where the main requirement may simply be time, reliability and an extra pair of hands.
It is the difference between renovating a kitchen and assembling a cabinet.
Between hiring a moving company and needing someone to help carry several boxes.
Between contracting an event supplier and needing another person for setup and packing.
That middle ground is where KAYA sees an underserved market.
An overlooked layer of the local economy
The idea also raises a broader question about how cities use available time and skills.
At any given moment, one household may be struggling to find an hour of help while someone a few kilometres away has that hour available and would gladly use it to earn.
The demand already exists.
So does the capacity.
What is often missing is an efficient way to connect the two.
If that connection becomes easier, relatively small tasks can create value on both sides: convenience for the person posting the task and flexible earning for the person completing it.
Starting in Uusimaa
KAYA is initially building its community in Uusimaa and is now inviting its first users and prospective Taskers to join its Early Access waitlist.
The platform is being introduced at Habitare 2026 at Messukeskus Helsinki, where visitors can meet the team and learn more about how the marketplace is being developed.
Habitare is a fitting setting for the idea.
A home is not only something that is designed and furnished. It is continuously being moved into, assembled, organised and adapted around everyday life.
And the same need for practical help extends beyond the home — into work, errands, events and the many small tasks that fall between doing everything yourself and hiring a professional.
For KAYA, that is the market worth building for.
Not the biggest jobs.
The smaller ones that still need to get done.
Join KAYA Early Access
KAYA is currently inviting people across Uusimaa who may need practical help — as well as those interested in earning flexibly as Taskers — to join its Early Access waitlist.
Media and partnership enquiries:
KAYA / Lärosn Partners Oy
hello@kayatask.com
Helsinki, Finland
