Yenda

What Yenda does

Yenda is a managed AI data labeling and business process outsourcing (BPO) services provider founded in 2022 and headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia. The company assembles custom, industry-specific teams drawn from top graduates of Zambian universities (law, medicine, finance, engineering) to perform AI training data labeling, document extraction, image annotation, transcription labeling, RLHF, and healthcare/fintech BPO work — including patient scheduling, insurance verification, and claims processing — for enterprise clients globally. Yenda's underlying technology is process-based rather than proprietary: it operates no software platform of its own, instead using Google Workspace and Slack for distributed team management, and leveraging third-party generative AI tools (Midjourney, ChatGPT, Murph AI) to augment its human teams' productivity on content production tasks.

The company's business model is a fully managed subscription service billed monthly across three tiers — Basic (client-managed), Basic+ (dedicated project lead), and Deluxe/Standard (full-service with end-to-end encryption and patch management) — priced approximately 50% below comparable in-house or outsourced solutions due to Zambia's lower cost base. Go-to-market is sales-led, combining direct outreach through the company website, case-study-driven content marketing, and a referral pipeline channeled through Tasq.ai for complex industry-specific projects. Named customers span AI tooling (Tasq.ai, SuperAnnotate), speech AI (Verbit), ed-tech (Kinnu), healthcare (Brite Orthodontics), construction AI (Firmus), and a large fintech with 400M+ users, with end clients located in San Francisco, New York City, Tel-Aviv, London, and Australia. Yenda holds strategic partnerships with the Government of Zambia, the University of Zambia, the University of Lusaka, and ZIALE for talent sourcing, and is a privately held company with no disclosed institutional funding.

Name

Yenda

Legal name

Yenda

Website

https://inyenda.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2022

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Yenda is a Lusaka, Zambia-based managed services company founded in 2022 that builds custom, industry-specific teams of Zambian university graduates to deliver AI data labeling and BPO services for global AI, healthcare, fintech, and legal enterprises at approximately 50% below comparable in-house costs.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

AI Data Labeling & BPO Services

NAICS

Custom Computer Programming Services (541511)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYHDAAALAB

Data Labeling & Annotation Services

Hardware, Technology & Telecom/Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning/Synthetic Data, Data Labeling & Training Data Tools

SECONDARYBPAEAHAF

AI/ML Engineering & Model Development Services

Business & Public Services/IT & Digital Services (Managed Services, Systems Integration)/Data, Analytics & AI Services

Keywords

• AI data labeling
• Data annotation services
• Managed BPO teams
• Human-in-the-loop RLHF
• Industry-specific outsourcing

Headquarters

HQ city

Lusaka

HQ country

Zambia

HQ region

Africa

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Managed Data Labeling Services: Yenda builds and manages custom industry-specific teams to perform AI data labeling, text extraction, image annotation, and transcription tasks for clients. Pricing is based on the service tier selected (Basic, Basic+, or Standard) with hourly billing. The company is 50% more affordable than comparable in-house or outsourced solutions due to lower cost of labor in Zambia.
2. BPO and Customer Support Services: Yenda provides remote call center and patient support teams for healthcare and fintech clients, handling patient scheduling, insurance verification, claims processing, and customer support. Revenue is generated through managed service contracts with dedicated teams.
3. Generative AI Content Services: Yenda leverages Generative AI tools (Midjourney, ChatGPT, Murph AI) through managed teams to produce AI images, audio, and other content for ed-tech and marketing clients, billed as part of project-based service contracts.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

Yenda builds and manages custom, industry-specific teams sourced from top Zambian university graduates (law, medicine, finance, engineering) to deliver AI data labeling and BPO services for global enterprise clients. Services include data labeling, data extraction, image annotation, RLHF, generative AI content creation, and remote customer support/patient management, delivered as fully managed engagements where Yenda handles recruitment, training, quality assurance, and team management.

Product overview

Yenda is an AI Data Labeling and BPO Services company that provides custom industry-specific teams for quality AI training data. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, Yenda operates as a managed service provider building specialized teams from African university talent. The portfolio consists of three service tiers (Basic, Standard, Deluxe) combined with a suite of specialized services including Data Labeling, Data Extraction, Image Annotation, Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF), and customer support/BPO services (Patient Verification, Insurance Verification, Claims Processing, Lead Generation, Social Media Management). Services are tailored by industry verticals: Legal/Fintech, Healthcare/Life Sciences, and Technology & AI Startups. The company differentiates through university partnerships to source subject-matter experts (law students, medical students, finance graduates, civil engineering students) who provide domain-specific knowledge for AI training data tasks.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Data Labeling Industry-specific talent performs accurate data labeling for AI model training, including text classification, image annotation, and structured data labeling with quality assurance processes, delivered for AI companies and enterprises across legal, medical, fintech, and other verticals.
• Data Extraction Subject-matter experts extract information from complex documents (legal, financial, medical) to provide high-quality training data for AI models, with documented 100% accuracy on Modern Slavery Act text extraction by law graduates.
• Image Annotation Computer vision annotation services including instance segmentation for medical cell images, construction document annotation, and AI-assisted image processing with human verification, achieving 95% segmentation accuracy on medical microscopy projects.
• Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) Human-in-the-loop AI training services where specialized teams verify, evaluate, and refine AI model outputs to improve accuracy and quality for AI/ML companies.
• Prompt Engineering for Image Generation Teams create prompts and generate AI images using Midjourney for content creation tasks, producing high-quality copyright-free images at scale for ed-tech and marketing clients (documented 3.5x productivity increase for Kinnu).
• Patient Verification Healthcare support services verifying patient information for medical clients, part of Yenda's customer support and patient management team offerings for healthcare organizations.
• Insurance Verification Verification services for insurance coverage and benefits, part of Yenda's healthcare and fintech BPO service offerings.
• Claims Processing Healthcare BPO service processing insurance claims for medical clients with accuracy and efficiency, delivered by managed remote teams.
• Lead Generation Sales support services including LinkedIn lead generation, contact enrichment, and business development data services for B2B technology and AI clients.
• Social Media Management Managed social media services including content management and engagement for technology and AI startup clients.
• Client-Facing Customer Support English-speaking remote call center and customer support teams providing patient scheduling, verification services, and overflow call management for North American healthcare clients (documented 90% placement success rate for Brite Orthodontics).

Quantifiable outcome

• 2–3 day turnaround from project kickoff to fully operational team
• +7 more outcomes

Named customers7 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability7 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Seven partnerships are on record, tiered core, flagship and minor.

• Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (ZIALE)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2023Yenda partnered with ZIALE to source law students for text extraction from Modern Slavery Act documents. Law students from ZIALE provided specialized legal knowledge required for accurate annotation of ~5,000 legal documents to train an LLM for detecting modern slavery breaches.
• Tasq.aicoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ Distributor · 1 January 2023Tasq.ai uses Yenda's managed teams for complex industry-specific data labeling projects that require specialized knowledge beyond what their 100M+ crowdsourced workforce can deliver. Tasq.ai refers enterprise clients to Yenda and serves as a distribution channel. After successful legal AI and fintech projects, Yenda became Tasq.ai's go-to AI training team across multiple industries.
• University of Zambia (UNZA)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022Yenda partners with the University of Zambia to source top-performing graduates for AI data labeling projects. UNZA's School of Medicine has supplied medical students for cell segmentation projects. Yenda leverages university relationships as a primary talent sourcing channel, conducting interviews and creating dedicated cohorts for client projects.
• University of LusakacoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022Yenda partners with the University of Lusaka to source finance and business graduates for fintech data labeling projects. The partnership provides a pipeline of industry-aligned talent for client projects requiring specialized financial knowledge.
• Government of ZambiaflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022Yenda is supported by the Government of Zambia as part of its mission to develop Zambia's workforce and leverage local talent for the global AI industry. Government endorsement provides legitimacy and access to broader institutional support.
• Ministry of Education (Zambia)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022Yenda has a partnership with Zambia's Ministry of Education supporting its mission to develop young talent and connect graduates with remote work opportunities.
• Ministry of Technology (Zambia)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022Yenda is supported by Zambia's Ministry of Technology as part of the country's push to develop a technology-enabled workforce and attract global AI and tech companies.

Scale indicators11 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Emerging players

• Labelbox: Labelbox provides a data labeling platform with managed labeling services for AI teams. It is comparable to Yenda as a competitor for AI training data spend, though it is more platform/tooling oriented while Yenda is purely service-based.
• Surge AI: Surge AI is a high-quality data labeling platform focused on LLM training and evaluation. It is an emerging player in the same premium labeling tier Yenda targets, though it leans more on a vetted crowd rather than managed teams.

Direct peers

• Scale AI: Scale AI is a leading AI data labeling and RLHF provider serving foundation model developers. While more platform-driven and technology-heavy than Yenda, it competes for the same enterprise budget on data labeling and model evaluation.
• CloudFactory: CloudFactory provides managed workforces for AI data labeling, document processing, and BPO, with operations in Nepal and Kenya. It competes directly with Yenda in offering dedicated, trained teams for AI training data and back-office workflows at competitive price points.
• iMerit: iMerit provides managed data annotation and enrichment services with specialized teams in India and Bhutan. Its model of dedicated, trained teams for computer vision, NLP, and medical AI closely parallels Yenda's industry-specific team approach.
• Sama: Sama is an Africa-based (Kenya/Uganda) AI data labeling and annotation company with a similar social-impact mission and managed-services model. It is arguably the closest comparable to Yenda given shared geography, focus on high-quality human-labeled data for AI, and enterprise customer base.
• Toloka: Toloka provides crowdsourced data labeling and RLHF services for AI developers, with operations spanning Europe and global markets. It competes with Yenda for LLM training data, evaluation, and human-feedback budgets.

Broad incumbents

• Appen: Appen is one of the largest publicly-listed data annotation companies, offering crowd-based labeling, evaluation, and LLM services across thousands of use cases. It is comparable to Yenda as a broad incumbent in AI data services, though it relies on a global crowd model rather than managed dedicated teams.
• TELUS International (Lionbridge AI): TELUS International's AI division (formerly Lionbridge AI) is a major incumbent in multilingual data annotation and AI data services. It overlaps with Yenda in offering enterprise-grade annotation but at much larger scale and with broader language coverage.

Regional players

• Andela: Andela is an Africa-focused tech talent marketplace that connects enterprises with vetted African software engineers. While it is more software-development focused than Yenda, it competes for the same narrative of building global enterprises on African talent and overlaps on customer segments.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/inyenda

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Yenda