Written in February.

GoLuggageFree is a BITSian startup currently working on building India’s largest luggage logistics network. The English Press Club met up with Shreyansh Chandak, one of the co-founders, to gain an insight into the start-up. 

Talking about the origins of the start-up, Shreyansh said that the idea was conceived during his summer internship.  After considering various pertinent issues in society, he recognised an opportunity in luggage logistics. Since then, there has been no turning back for him. Despite the start-up being fairly new, there are over 1500 downloads for the mobile application and it is steadily gaining fifteen new users every day.

When questioned about the factors responsible for their rapid success, Shreyansh stressed on the importance of developing a strong customer feedback system in a service-oriented startup. According to him, this improved their conversion rate—the percentage of users who actually end up using a cloakroom—from thirteen to 20 per cent in just a week. The team used a customer resource management software to identify the causes behind the low conversion rate: a lack of cloakrooms in some of the densely-populated regions in Delhi, such as Old Delhi and Sarojini Nagar. After opening up cloakrooms in such locations, the results were visible almost immediately.

Their current workforce consists of eight people—four of them work in the core team while the rest are interns. Talking about the drawbacks of operating out of Pilani, Shreyansh expressed the inconvenience in managing a service-driven startup from such a remote place and the difficulty in compensating for a part-time workforce.

With both co-founders being members of Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), Shreyansh impressed upon the role CEL played in equipping them with the skills required to run a start-up. It had also helped them connect with people in the start-up ecosystem and get to know the industry better. When asked if they would be keen on working with the Pilani Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development Society (PIEDS) for incubation on campus, he said that it would not be ideal at this stage as PIEDS takes equity in the start-up which would restrict their cash flow. 

When questioned about the edge that they possess over their competitors—Backdolo, Lugsto, and CarterX to name a few—Shreyansh replied that they prided themselves on their business model, and emphasised their capability to sustain it in the long-run. Talking about their future, he elaborated upon his desire to make GoLuggageFree the backbone of the travel industry by monopolising luggage logistics. 

Finally, in his message for aspiring entrepreneurs, Shreyansh remarked, ‘Fall in love with the problem rather than the solution because solutions will change based on the market.’ According to him, determination and persistence is an essential quality in the journey of a student-entrepreneur, being full of numerous trials and tribulations.