POCKET PA : The Automated Personal Assistant App
How many times have you wanted to be in two places at once to do certain errands, but unfortunately we can’t because of human nature which restricts us to only one place at once unless its virtually speaking where its possible. From trying to renew your vehicle license over lunch break? Rushing to get your groceries done before the store closes at night? You’ll be pleased to hear, those days are over.
South African startup Pocket-PA wants to run all your errands for you by using a combination of technology and logistics to enable you to get your errands (from weekly household grocery shopping; to medication pickups or even shuttling the kids to and from school) taken care of at a time of your choice and at very affordable charges.
The app is based on simplicity and the following are some of its features :
- Creating User Profile
- Making your order
- Editing the Cart details
- GPS tracking of the goods in real-time
- Delivery to your doorstep whereby user receives a notification on the same
Launched as a pilot project in 2014 in Durban, with a hard-launch in 2016, Pocket-PA aims to take away the burden of errands from busy professionals, and provides an on-demand service offering to complete any administrative or organizational task on their behalf.
The company spent the first eight months of its pilot phase testing the market to understand where demand lies, and this period led him to believe the key is in providing a flexible, wide-ranging personal assistant service; rather than limiting the offering to a single service such as courier, or concierge.
“The benefits of offering diverse services include the fact that we retain clients that come to us for one thing, and end up knowing they can get something else in future. This means we convert a one-time client to a lifetime client. And we all know that businesses make money not by getting more clients, but by getting the existing clients to buy again and again,” said Founder Scelo Nciki.
With such innovation more and more people should realize the value of time in our day to day running and how much money can be saved while doing that. It is a great opportunity for South Africa to be an example to all leading and growing technological startups who want to solve this problem of time-waste-management.
The solution is incredibly scalable, and the startup has recently received ZAR500,000 (US$38,600) in funding from the SmartXchange TIA Innovation Seed Fund to build out and scale the solution. The funding will go a long way in assisting the startup with the expansion plans. Currently the app is on its finalizing stages, as plans to launch it around June or July are under way.
Nonetheless, Pocket-PA says the potential scale of its solution is significant, and Nciki aims to take the company global.
“We are taking notes on Uber’s model, as we believe our service has a similar growth potential.”
