Innovation & Job News

YaSabe, the bilingual online Yellow Pages, is expanding its staff. The company is looking to hire three or four front-end and back-end developers for its Herndon, Va., offices.

The announcement comes on the heels of president and company founder Zubair Talib's induction into MindShare 2013. "I'm pleased to be a part of the group," Talib says. "It's great to see other CEOs. The network seems to be fantastic."

Talib says YaSabe’s expansion comes at a time when the Hispanic population in the U.S. is growing. "One in six Americans is Hispanic," Talib explains. While users can access his company's online search engine in Spanish or English, he says that 70 percent use YaSabe in Spanish.

According to Talib, the Hispanic community tends to access the Internet in trends that he tries to capitalize on for the search engine. "Hispanics spend 20 percent more on mobile service than any other demographic," he says. "It's 25 percent more likely that Hispanics will own a smartphone. And 50 percent of engagement on YaSabe is mobile[-based]."

YaSabe culls the Internet much like any search engine, aggregating data about businesses. But there are differences. Users can search for 18 different types of Latin cuisine. They can search for service providers who are bilingual, or for jobs for people speaking more than one language, among other things.

One popular section on YaSabe is "Ayudame," an interactive question-and-answer feature that allows users to send a query to the YaSabe staff. A "local search expert" then answers the question and posts the response on the site for the benefit of the community. "It's like a concierge," Talib explains. "We didn't have great content when we started, so we put [Ayudame] up for people to use."

As YaSabe prepares to ramp up and partner with media organizations to connect with growing local Latino communities, Talib says, "We're excited. The Latino community is so diverse—we provide a service across different groups. It's exciting to be a part of the rising tide."