The concept for Gepek, a Croatian startup that goals to faucet the sharing economy for same-day deliveries, took place as a result of a brother and sister wished to assist their mom entry her medicine shortly.
One Friday afternoon, Carla and Dario Ferreri’s mom had arrived at a seaside village for a vacation when she realized she forgot her blood strain medicine. Because it was a weekend and she or he was in a rural space, their mother was a three-day supply window for her meds. So her youngsters referred to as a pal who referred to as a friend-of-a-friend who was driving in that route, and earlier than the day was out, their mom was in possession of her medicine.
After that, the Ferreris — each of whom had labored in the fields of IT administration and logistics for greater than 15 years — determined to construct a supply enterprise primarily based on the sharing economy. They based the firm in April 2020 with the perception {that a} decentralized, blockchain-based logistics infrastructure might make provide chain methods extra manageable and resilient by permitting people to assist each other.
Gepek now claims to have a big sufficient community of carpoolers to offer on-demand bundle supply at any hour, sometimes inside half-hour to some hours of a consumer’s request, and at decrease charges than specific supply by typical submit. The startup, which continues to be elevating a seed spherical, envisions itself pulling in income from transaction charges and partnerships with complementary providers like insurance coverage.
Gepek, which interprets from Croatian to “trunk,” as in of a automobile, has greater than 4,200 registered customers in Croatia already and is increasing into the broader European market, with a objective to develop to 200,000 lively customers by the finish of 2023, in keeping with an organization spokesperson. The startup has made deliveries to Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Serbia and Slovenia with none promoting price, as a substitute counting on phrase of mouth.
“We will expand into central and Eastern Europe in Q1 next year, after the mobile app development,” Carla Ferreri informed TechCrunch. “We plan to open local offices and already have partnerships with startup accelerators, blockchain companies, etc.”
One such partnership is with Auki Labs, a Hong Kong-based startup that builds a exact positioning engine for augmented actuality experiences. While designed for digital worlds, Auki Labs’ superior peer-to-peer positioning protocols will enable Gepek to run on an alternative choice to GPS that doesn’t require a satellite tv for pc connection, the firms say.
While most supply and ridesharing providers right now depend on GPS, Auki Labs CEO Nils Pihl argues that tried-and-true navigation system can truly create location accuracy challenges for senders, drivers and receivers. Peer-to-peer positioning, on the different hand, permits units (like smartphones) to find out the place they’re relative to at least one one other and determine the exact location. This permits for a bundle to be delivered not simply to, say, an workplace constructing, however to a selected room inside that constructing.
“It does not require a map of the building, and that is the beauty of it,” Pihl informed TechCrunch. “There’s a single point of reference, placed somewhere in the entrance of the building in the form of a simple QR code. After scanning, you enter a shared [augmented reality] positioning space where both [the deliverer and the deliveree] can see each other’s phones. This allows us to have a successful last meter delivery by finding a person without communicating much with the people included in the process.”
In addition to upping its location accuracy recreation, Gepek can also be in the course of of implementing blockchain into its platform to offer elevated safety and real-time monitoring information, in keeping with the firm. Gepek additionally stated blockchain will allow crypto cost choices and a tokenized status system.