Why are we building HyperTrack?
Of all things in the world, why are we solving the tracking problem? Because we think the world needs it and will need it even more in the future. Here’s why we think so.
It has been over 20 years since ecommerce and yet less than 5% of all commerce in the world is online. Everything else started going online due to smartphones with apps. Until five years ago, who thought taxis would be online, or restaurants, or groceries or plumbers? Our lives are now filled with products and services available at the tap of a button. Every place in the world where there are (a) smartphones and (b) local businesses — which is everywhere in the world — people are tapping their phones to get things picked up and delivered within the hour. Unlike old ecommerce, things are not coming to your doorstep next day or on Tuesday, they are now coming to you within 35 minutes or on Tuesday 1–2p. In the US, they call this phenomenon the on-demand economy. In India, they call it hyperlocal. In China, they call it O2O — offline to online. We believe these are all names of the same wider phenomenon of connected commerce.
Just as 5 years after ecommerce, there was irrational exuberance about the power of the the Internet, 5 years into the on-demand economy there is similar excitement about the power of the smartphone. Just as there was a churn in the industry then, we are undergoing a churn in the industry now. Just as ecommerce continues to be a part of our lives for a lifetime, the on-demand economy is here to stay for our lifetime. It is an idea whose time has come. It is a technology that touches everyone in the world of a thriving smartphone population and local economy. We believe that this new economy is going to be larger than ecommerce, an order of magnitude larger.
We love startups who are building out this new economy in every part of the world and we want to support them. These are startups for whom smartphones are the fabric of the new economy. Stuff and people are moving around with smartphones powered by their apps, trying to get to the customer to make magic happen. We are building the tracking OS for this new economy. We are building a platform that helps these companies deliver magic to their customers. We want to get one big item off their plate. We want to give them the best that the world of tracking has to offer without them having to each build it on their own. We want to support them in changing the world, one magical delivery at a time…
Team HyperTrack
