16
de Febrer
de
2016
Act.
16
de Febrer
de
2016
Oscar Pierre, a 32-year-old aeronautics engineer, is the founder of one the best internationally recognised start-ups in the delivery sector: Glovo. Its contribution to the market is as a courier service that takes a maximum of an hour to deliver an order, a clear improvement on the usual delivery times of between one and seven days offered by traditional and e-commerce companies.
Its business model has now been put under the microscope. It is also one of the Catalan projects chosen as a finalist for the Mobile Premier Awards. The media exposure fits "like a glove", according to the company's CEO, who adds that in just this first quarter of 2016 the firm is in the middle of setting up in Paris. "We have to contact a lot of people abroad so that they can join Glovo or invest in it," he says.
In only a single year, the start-up is already delivering more than 10,000 orders a day using some 250 deliverers and it boasts some 50,000 registered users. It is a project that has revealed Pierre's eye for business and who, after a time with Airbus, preferred to exchange the stability offered by a big company for life as an entrepreneur.
What did you see at Airbus that made you choose to become an entrepreneur?
I was at Airbus during the work experience stage in the penultimate year of my degree, but it helped me to see that I wasn't made to work in a large company with all their routines. More than anything, the experience made me see that I wanted my own business.
Were you thinking of ideas along the lines of Glovo from the beginning?
In the last year of my degree I clearly saw that I wanted to finish with a project under way. At that time I was in the United States and my attention was caught by services such as Airbnb and Uber, in other words, everything to do with the sharing economy. I was fascinated with how society had become more efficient with the resources there are and I clearly saw a space in the area of couriers and goods delivery. I wanted to help people get more out of their time, creating a platform that would unite people who did have time, a motorbike and a mobile, to deliver orders.
How has the original idea changed compared with the app we now know?
At the beginning we simply launched with an app that sent packages within the same city, but we learnt to adapt. The first few months were all about learning, finding out what people wanted and we saw that some 80% of our users wanted us to go shopping for them. We adapted to that and offered a service to cover people's need to have orders made for them.
Delivery is usually referred to in the context of restaurants. Why haven't we seen this taken up in more areas?
The food delivery sector is highly exploited, and it will continue growing despite already being very large. For us it is the tip of the iceberg in terms of home delivery. We are seeing a change of culture in which not only food is ordered, where obviously there is the most volume, because one eats three times a day, but people are getting used to ordering just about anything and make more of their time. It is true that there is a change of culture and it is a sector that has to educate the market, but the results are very good.
E-commerce is growing because people use it. Is that not educating customers about the use of home delivery?
E-commerce helps us a lot, especially Amazon. One of its projects is to begin same day delivery, which it already does in the US and London, and soon it will also happen here. All of that makes you reflect on what you really need. If Amazon can already deliver the next day, is it necessary for me to have it in 60 minutes? I think not, but having the option creates the need. Now when we see that an order will take seven days, we reject it. Glovo brings you anything in your city within an average of 45 minutes.
Looked at that way, it might seem that Glovo would be a better service for companies rather than individuals.
We work for more than 250 companies that use us for internal delivery or to deliver to their clients. There are shops who have never delivered because they do not want to or they cannot manage the service and so they call Glovo when their client wants something delivered at home. However, almost everything we do is for private individuals; we are growing a lot in providing this service to an end user. B2B is not our main target, it is okay in terms of volume, but our focus is on the end user.
Would you define yourself as a service that optimises what transport companies already provide?
When a client or company uses us, yes, but I think that Glovo goes further. We offer a service to the end user that is very disruptive, no one had ever gone to your favourite bakery and brought you croissants on a Sunday morning. But what is true is that, as a courier service, we are more technological, economic and efficient than large companies.
Shopping online has grown 15% a year in the past four years. Is it beneficial or a competitive threat?
Each city will have its leading service, and even all over the world, sooner or later rivals will appear because it is clear market. We believe we are leaders in Spain and our aim is to continue to be so. That is why we are focused on growing in Europe, as it is still a young market, and an app like Glovo does not exist anywhere esle, only in London have there been initiatives focused on B2C, and that is why we want to deliver quickly. These companies can be easily copied and the main barrier to entry is managing the operation, because the deliverers, the 'glovers', are independent people who connect with each other when they can and we cannot expect anything more from them. The added value that we can offer when the moment comes is experience and the users built up to that point.
In a year you have concluded two funding rounds that together account for 2,140,000 million euros. It is a high number for such a short time.
Yes, the latest was 2 million only three months ago. The founders of Tuenti, Wallapop, Letsbonus and also the Cube Investments and Crowd Angel funds took part, among others.
Why is it that such powerful investors have taken an interest?
Firstly, because it is a clear market and it will be Glovo or a substitute of Glovo that will win the market. And secondly, because in a short time we have shown what investors are looking for: quick execution. The company was founded in February 2015 and by June of the same year we were already handling more than 50 orders a day, with all the technology in place. It was already time to start thinking about expanding. I think it is due to the combination of a team that knows how to work quickly and a clear and large market.
You recently integrated mobile payment through Zapper. What benefits does expanding your services through cooperation with other start-ups bring?
It allows you to focus on what you know how to do well and I think that that is what a start-up should do. There are a lot of initiatives that do interesting things they are experts in, but they lack the delivery factor. We are open to cooperation, especially with small companies. In Zapper's case, they have a portfolio of restaurants, but they do not take anything to homes or offices; that is good for us because we can add a part of their clientèle.
Does a readiness to cooperate make it easier to get entrepreneurial projects moving?
Yes, although there are caveats. Cooperation is good, especially on a local scale. Barcelona is already positioned as an entrepreneurial and technological city and no doubt it is in the top five entrepreneurial capitals that are growing in Europe and the world. We are attracting a huge amount of international talent, the investor ecosystem is stronger than a few years ago and we have the strong point of quality of life. Perhaps some see it as a drawback when it takes large companies time to accept the arrival of new projects, but we see that they are increasingly dedicating more resources to innovation and that they are more welcoming of new initiatives.
Will we see a rise in the number of spin-offs coming out of the R&D departments of large companies?
Possibly, it is what has happened in the United States. Looking at the trend, it would make sense for it to start happening here.
Many start-ups come under the umbrella of the sharing economy, but they are harshly criticised because they are based on the so-called on-demand economy.
The term sharing economy is a little relative. I don't mind if it is said we are on demand and that we are non-cooperative. What I can say is the glovers are independent in Glovo, they connect when they want, they carry out the orders they want and we never force them to do a full day nor take on tougher or more complicated deliveries. They are always the ones who choose. What does help us a lot in this filter of the sharing economy is that each glover is like their own business because they know when an order has been finished, the user evaluates them and they know that if they provide a bad service, the evaluations will be negative. In the end all we can do is guarantee that all the deliverers have high evaluations. The magic of the sharing and on demand economies is that they work, without employees, with all the peers giving the best of themselves because they are reinvesting in their own micro-business.
Have you done trials with drones and are you ready for when there is a legal framework regulating their use? When will we see them making deliveries?
We did some tests as a sort of weekend project of our developers because they are keen to innovate. As for a legal framework, it is still some way off, but it makes sense for it to happen. If the law moves as fast as technology, it will end up happening, because it will make us more efficient. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there are technological aspects that need improving, such as the safety of drones. Imagine if one is flying over a city and it fails and falls; it could hurt someone. I think that law and technology will progress at the same pace.
Its business model has now been put under the microscope. It is also one of the Catalan projects chosen as a finalist for the Mobile Premier Awards. The media exposure fits "like a glove", according to the company's CEO, who adds that in just this first quarter of 2016 the firm is in the middle of setting up in Paris. "We have to contact a lot of people abroad so that they can join Glovo or invest in it," he says.
In only a single year, the start-up is already delivering more than 10,000 orders a day using some 250 deliverers and it boasts some 50,000 registered users. It is a project that has revealed Pierre's eye for business and who, after a time with Airbus, preferred to exchange the stability offered by a big company for life as an entrepreneur.
What did you see at Airbus that made you choose to become an entrepreneur?
I was at Airbus during the work experience stage in the penultimate year of my degree, but it helped me to see that I wasn't made to work in a large company with all their routines. More than anything, the experience made me see that I wanted my own business.
Were you thinking of ideas along the lines of Glovo from the beginning?
In the last year of my degree I clearly saw that I wanted to finish with a project under way. At that time I was in the United States and my attention was caught by services such as Airbnb and Uber, in other words, everything to do with the sharing economy. I was fascinated with how society had become more efficient with the resources there are and I clearly saw a space in the area of couriers and goods delivery. I wanted to help people get more out of their time, creating a platform that would unite people who did have time, a motorbike and a mobile, to deliver orders.
How has the original idea changed compared with the app we now know?
At the beginning we simply launched with an app that sent packages within the same city, but we learnt to adapt. The first few months were all about learning, finding out what people wanted and we saw that some 80% of our users wanted us to go shopping for them. We adapted to that and offered a service to cover people's need to have orders made for them.
Delivery is usually referred to in the context of restaurants. Why haven't we seen this taken up in more areas?
The food delivery sector is highly exploited, and it will continue growing despite already being very large. For us it is the tip of the iceberg in terms of home delivery. We are seeing a change of culture in which not only food is ordered, where obviously there is the most volume, because one eats three times a day, but people are getting used to ordering just about anything and make more of their time. It is true that there is a change of culture and it is a sector that has to educate the market, but the results are very good.
E-commerce is growing because people use it. Is that not educating customers about the use of home delivery?
E-commerce helps us a lot, especially Amazon. One of its projects is to begin same day delivery, which it already does in the US and London, and soon it will also happen here. All of that makes you reflect on what you really need. If Amazon can already deliver the next day, is it necessary for me to have it in 60 minutes? I think not, but having the option creates the need. Now when we see that an order will take seven days, we reject it. Glovo brings you anything in your city within an average of 45 minutes.
Looked at that way, it might seem that Glovo would be a better service for companies rather than individuals.
We work for more than 250 companies that use us for internal delivery or to deliver to their clients. There are shops who have never delivered because they do not want to or they cannot manage the service and so they call Glovo when their client wants something delivered at home. However, almost everything we do is for private individuals; we are growing a lot in providing this service to an end user. B2B is not our main target, it is okay in terms of volume, but our focus is on the end user.
Would you define yourself as a service that optimises what transport companies already provide?
When a client or company uses us, yes, but I think that Glovo goes further. We offer a service to the end user that is very disruptive, no one had ever gone to your favourite bakery and brought you croissants on a Sunday morning. But what is true is that, as a courier service, we are more technological, economic and efficient than large companies.
Shopping online has grown 15% a year in the past four years. Is it beneficial or a competitive threat?
Each city will have its leading service, and even all over the world, sooner or later rivals will appear because it is clear market. We believe we are leaders in Spain and our aim is to continue to be so. That is why we are focused on growing in Europe, as it is still a young market, and an app like Glovo does not exist anywhere esle, only in London have there been initiatives focused on B2C, and that is why we want to deliver quickly. These companies can be easily copied and the main barrier to entry is managing the operation, because the deliverers, the 'glovers', are independent people who connect with each other when they can and we cannot expect anything more from them. The added value that we can offer when the moment comes is experience and the users built up to that point.
In a year you have concluded two funding rounds that together account for 2,140,000 million euros. It is a high number for such a short time.
Yes, the latest was 2 million only three months ago. The founders of Tuenti, Wallapop, Letsbonus and also the Cube Investments and Crowd Angel funds took part, among others.
Why is it that such powerful investors have taken an interest?
Firstly, because it is a clear market and it will be Glovo or a substitute of Glovo that will win the market. And secondly, because in a short time we have shown what investors are looking for: quick execution. The company was founded in February 2015 and by June of the same year we were already handling more than 50 orders a day, with all the technology in place. It was already time to start thinking about expanding. I think it is due to the combination of a team that knows how to work quickly and a clear and large market.
You recently integrated mobile payment through Zapper. What benefits does expanding your services through cooperation with other start-ups bring?
It allows you to focus on what you know how to do well and I think that that is what a start-up should do. There are a lot of initiatives that do interesting things they are experts in, but they lack the delivery factor. We are open to cooperation, especially with small companies. In Zapper's case, they have a portfolio of restaurants, but they do not take anything to homes or offices; that is good for us because we can add a part of their clientèle.
Does a readiness to cooperate make it easier to get entrepreneurial projects moving?
Yes, although there are caveats. Cooperation is good, especially on a local scale. Barcelona is already positioned as an entrepreneurial and technological city and no doubt it is in the top five entrepreneurial capitals that are growing in Europe and the world. We are attracting a huge amount of international talent, the investor ecosystem is stronger than a few years ago and we have the strong point of quality of life. Perhaps some see it as a drawback when it takes large companies time to accept the arrival of new projects, but we see that they are increasingly dedicating more resources to innovation and that they are more welcoming of new initiatives.
Will we see a rise in the number of spin-offs coming out of the R&D departments of large companies?
Possibly, it is what has happened in the United States. Looking at the trend, it would make sense for it to start happening here.
Many start-ups come under the umbrella of the sharing economy, but they are harshly criticised because they are based on the so-called on-demand economy.
The term sharing economy is a little relative. I don't mind if it is said we are on demand and that we are non-cooperative. What I can say is the glovers are independent in Glovo, they connect when they want, they carry out the orders they want and we never force them to do a full day nor take on tougher or more complicated deliveries. They are always the ones who choose. What does help us a lot in this filter of the sharing economy is that each glover is like their own business because they know when an order has been finished, the user evaluates them and they know that if they provide a bad service, the evaluations will be negative. In the end all we can do is guarantee that all the deliverers have high evaluations. The magic of the sharing and on demand economies is that they work, without employees, with all the peers giving the best of themselves because they are reinvesting in their own micro-business.
Have you done trials with drones and are you ready for when there is a legal framework regulating their use? When will we see them making deliveries?
We did some tests as a sort of weekend project of our developers because they are keen to innovate. As for a legal framework, it is still some way off, but it makes sense for it to happen. If the law moves as fast as technology, it will end up happening, because it will make us more efficient. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there are technological aspects that need improving, such as the safety of drones. Imagine if one is flying over a city and it fails and falls; it could hurt someone. I think that law and technology will progress at the same pace.