On-demand courier service Zoom2U is venturing into a new sector five years after its launch
Zoom2U founder and CEO Steve Orenstein has created a new app, Locate2U, designed to provide the same courier-matching and tracking for service businesses, helping people know when tradies are likely to arrive.
The tool helps bridge the communications gap between tradespeople and customers, helping small business owners make a list of their jobs, allowing customers to live-track their movements as they go.
Gaining some 50,000 customers across Australia and the US since Zoom2U’s launch, there are 2,000 drivers who have completed over a million deliveries.
Zoom2U came out top at the 2019 Product Review annual awards, recognised for products and services.
Orenstein says the business is all about customer focus and Locate2U has derived from that.
Zoom2U was one of ATN’s 2016 cover stories
“The idea is around connecting customers with the business; so whether you’re a logistics business, a plumber, an electrician or an installer, you’ll be able to track that person actually doing the arrival of the delivery or installation,” he says.
“It’s designed initially for small business; the app gives them a list of their bookings for the day and they can click to edit or to navigate to Google maps or Apple maps and it gives them the full driving direction to get there.
“The key thing that people will use it for is live visibility – customers often get frustrated by not being able to know when tradies are likely to arrive so Locate2U can simply solve that by sharing a link with the customer that they can click on and open and be able to see live location and automatically generate an estimated arrival time.”
Zoom2U has grown considerably since its inception; it came to life after Orenstein sold his first business, Connect2Field – a tradesperson scheduling service, to a NYSE company.
“We’re going on a path where we’ll continue to grow what we’re doing in Australia and then sell it across the world,” Orenstein adds.
“I think there’s a lot that we can do for the technology; we’ve been very customer-focused, it’s figuring out what’s going to be really valuable for the customer and what’s going to help their business become more successful.
“At Zoom2U we’ve built this thing where every time we’ve delivered we send an SMS to the customer asking them to rate the experience, so you’ve got this constant feedback every single day – we knew what was working and what wasn’t.”
Launched in December, the app is about to go live in the US. The company has raised $4.2 million in a funding round, led by investment management firm Perennial Value Management, with the money going towards new staff and Locate2U.
The Sydney-based company has raised $7 million to date, with the Zoom2U platform turning around $1 million in revenue a month.
Orenstein also co-hosts the Founders on Air podcast where he interviews start-up owners, from whom he draws business inspiration.