What is Rappi?

Resultado de imagen de rappiRappi is the first app in Mexico that allows you to buy groceries from many supermarkets and even local bakeries. In Mexico its diffusion started just some months before I came here, we had before this type of service with the supermarkets, but it was more the telephone calling system. I will show you some techniques that Rappi had used to gain more popularity.

Techniques of Rappi (The Latin-American way)

Growth Hacking

  • Growth Hacking is a technique that searches to raise the volume of the users, earnings and impact of the company with the minimum of possible resources. Rappi use their costumers as their main way of marketing. latin-americans tend more to trust the advices or the experience of a friend, instead of trying new things seen in an ad. So Rappi focus in the complete satisfaction of the customer. Our guest lecture, that talk about her Spotify experience, has already approach this theme, and how different are the European style vs the American style.Resultado de imagen de rappi

Adding value to their brand

  • Resultado de imagen de rappiRappi is searching constantly in the social media about the popularity of their brand and how the customers react to it. If it is memorable or if the customers really don’t care about the brand and they could actually use the same service but with another brand. In lationamerica they have leading us to a market world, where we start searching for a product and months later we really don’t care about the product, we have developed a fidelity to the brand and we start caring more about the brand. Our love to a brand sometimes reaches such a high level, that we start using the brand name, instead of the name of the product. For example: In Mexico we called the tissue papers “Kleenex”, because it’s the “best” brand. So when you ask in Mexico for a tissue paper, we will ask for a “Kleenex”, never for a “tissue paper”.

Catalogue

  • Rappi didn’t limit to only supermarkets, this start-up searched with many 24/7 stores (like pressbyran), coffee shops, some restaurants and some bakeries. Reaching more market and being able to satisfy different needs of their customers with just one app. Also the design of their catalogue is really cool.Resultado de imagen de rappi

Why this post?

#1 So the main reason of this was to contact Rappi, and give some feedback. A plus, was some suggestions of the european style that I like.

#2 The second reason was that I think someone in the classroom has a similar start-up, he wants to do, so he can use the experience of Rappi and may be even try out some of the Latin-American techniques.

This is a short story illustrating how networking is so far the most powerful tool to progress I have encountered.

Recently we had a guest speaker in our entrepreneurship class (ME2603) and she mentioned the SUP46 Startup Café as a good place to connect with people. Since I was looking for startup events to attend and also for feedback for my venture idea I decided to follow my own advice and just “be present” there. (Check out the article here)

Putting yourself out there

When I entered the café it was rather empty and i took a quick look around before chatting up someone standing at a table. It turned out, that this person was Lana Kaupuza, the receptionist of SUP46. I explained to her the reason for my presence: to collect feedback and find people who might help me with the development of a prototype for my venture idea, the Sound Hub. (See the website here)

After explaining the idea to her she started coming up with very useful feedback and ideas for improving the business model. She also gave me several tips on how to proceed, which events and institutions to go to and even gave me a tour of the SUP46 office.

While talking to other people and collecting feedback on my venture idea I ended up helping some people from a start-up called “Nosto” in the presentation room to set up their Background screen for an event they would host that evening.

When I articulated to Lana how happy i was to get to meet all these interesting people and getting all this positive feedback she said something that stuck with me:

“There is really just two things that we have control over: Attendance and Attitude”

Networking Success

Shortly after leaving the building I started getting invitations to several Facebook chats…

Turns out Lana had asked on her Facebook if anyone was interested in helping with a project including electronics and Bluetooth and then connected anyone interested with me.

Me with my new partner

Me with my new partner

From one of these chats emerged a meeting with a guy named Shehryar Khan, a software developer at Ericsson. We met today in the Startup Café and had a quick chat about where I was going with the project and how it could be realized before he agreed to help me with the development of a prototype using an Arduino Development Kit.

This result was beyond by wildest expectations and I’m very excited to see the further development.

What can you take from this post?

  1. It’s proof that simply showing up at the right place and talking to many people can yield great results.
  2. It shows the power of networking and creating the kind of connections with people that make them happy to help you.
  3. If you feel like getting ahead with your project, but there is no start-up event happening at the moment; just got to the Startup Café at SUP46, you wont regret it!
Broccoli soup at Startup Cefé

Broccoli soup at Startup Café

PS: The Startup Café also offers very tasty food.

Wednesday I went to an event called “Doing Good Better: An event with Will MacAskill”. Nearly 190 people attended this event quite interesting.

 

effective_altruism

 

Will MacAskill is an Associate Professor in philosophy at Lincoln college in Oxford.

He cofounded two non-profits: “80 000 hours” –which provides research and advice on how to make a difference through your career-, and “Giving what you can” –encouraging people to commit to give at least 10% of their income to the most effective charities-.

These organisations helped to spark the effective altruism.

During his talk he tried to explain us how to make the most difference with the time and money at hand.

He shows us some social programs –like the Play pump, or Scared straight which is a program for juvenile delinquency in which they give a tour in prison to show how the life is hard in there….but this program is actually leading to more crimes, rapes …than before- that deviated from their main goal.

After that he explained us a simple way to help people all around the world without much effort, for example using his non-profit organization “Giving what you can”.

You can read more on his book Doing Good Better – Effective altruism and How you can Make a Difference-.