In the bag: Start-up delivers for gig riders
In the midst of a global pandemic, Eric Fan was tinkering away at a product design that he hoped would revolutionise advertising.
The idea came to him while studying his masters at Stanford University in 2019, where he was struck by the large number of students on campus.
“I was just thinking, what would be a cool way to incentivise some of these students in their spare time to promote local businesses?” said Fan.
When the pandemic hit and demand for food delivery services such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo and DoorDash surged as restaurants adapted to takeaway-only, Fan’s concept became clear.
His idea? A digital food delivery bag that promotes businesses and earns riders a little extra cash on top of what they are making riding for the delivery bigwigs.
“When COVID-19 hit and the lengthy lockdowns, that kind of forced us to think, how do we implement this idea into an infrastructure which was obviously booming at the time? Everyone’s seeking that convenience,” Fan said.
Fan assembled a small team of tech experts, who worked away at the idea in between their everyday jobs. And after many online catch-ups and after-hours work, Lumos was launched.
“Data has always been my bread and butter. Everyone else I brought on board, they pretty much had similar backgrounds in tech, oriented around data implementation and app development.”
Lumos’ cheapest advertisement package starts at $127 a month if paid bi-annually. This will deploy five screens, estimated to make 10,000 impressions using two different ads. The most expensive package is a custom price, but the last priced package is their $680 a month “grow fast” that deploys 40 screens, using four different ads and is estimated to make 53,333 impressions.
Officially launching in early 2022, Lumos is active in Sydney and Melbourne, but Fan said the company plans to push into other states and launch in other countries.
“We are quite ambitious to take this overseas. Our goal is to build a global company, and all the processes and business rules that we design and build is essentially allowing us to reach that scale.”
With big clients, such as Woolworths’ metro60, Sushi Hub and DoorDash, along with more localised small businesses, Fan said there was demand for the product and opportunity to grow.
The company has about 120 active riders, which Fan said were technically not employees of Lumos, which would exclude them from previous rulings that classified delivery workers as “independent contractors”.
“We are not charging them for use of this product, and we are making sure that the product design meets the latest legislations.”
“We are providing them a supplementary income on top of what they are already doing. So, we are not asking them to do a special service for us. If they are on the road, and they want to use our product, then feel free to turn it on, and they can add that additional income. We are essentially leasing a space.”
To be eligible, riders need to be registered as an active food delivery partner in Australia for any major food app, including Ubereats, Easi, HungryPanda and DoorDash. A GPS in the backpack tracks how long and far riders travel, which calculates how much they are paid.
Despite delivery apps collapsing in Australia, the most recent of which was Deliveroo ending its operations in November last year, Fan said it had actually increased interest in Lumos from riders looking for extra cash.
In 2023, with expansion on the company’s horizon, Fan said they were also looking to grow their product base.
“There are a lot of other products that are currently in the pipeline, and this technology can be re-used in a lot of other cases.”
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Source: Thanks smh.com