Kyle
In reading the pitch from Swiss startup Nearbors I immediately started thinking about Zaarly. The pitch talks about being too busy to go out shopping for groceries or food and having someone else do it for you. Zaarly has done well in some big city markets and is deploying across other medium markets in the United States, so why not have a similar startup in Switzerland?
Well after watching the video below, I quickly realized that Nearbors has taken part of the Zaarly concept a lot further and they’ve combined mobile payments.
Here’s how it works:
Say you’re on deadline either working from home or the office. It’s lunch time and you need some groceries or a decent salad and sandwich. With Zaarly you put the request out there and hope that someone responds.
With Nearbors, there is a community of folks out there waiting for your Nearbor requests. Nearbors, neighbor couriers sign up for the service, have GPS enabled on their phone and receive “jobs” while they are enroute.
So now say Sally is passing by Panera and they are networked into the Nearbors program. I can order a half sandwich and macaroni and cheese and have Sally bring it to me on her way back to her office.
The best part is that through Nearbors they already have my payment information. When Sally gets to checkout she shares a QR code unique to my payment information order and voila it’s paid for. I can see where Sally is enroute to my home or office in the app and then when she arrives I can click the app one more time to pay her a “commission”.
This idea is very well thought out and according to co-founder Ryan Vannin they hope for global expansion. We got a chance to talk with Vannin who’s native tongue is Italian, so please look past his English and onto this great idea.