Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Late-night errands app is a goer
A former student and his high school friend are halfway towards securing a £150,000 investment for their takeaway app, which has been downloaded by 6,000 young people across Canterbury.
University of Kent graduate Karim Clarke and friend Stephen Connell are taking on the likes of Just Eat and Deliveroo by offering late-night deliveries for hungry scholars with their business Unirunners.
The company fetches everything from cigarettes to food, 24 hours a day, and has made more than £80,000 in revenues since launching in September.
Investors have so far pledged £73,000 in a crowdfunding initiative, which the company’s owners hope will pay for a marketing campaign, redeveloping its app and hiring more staff.
The pair, both 22, also hope they can expand the business to other cities across the UK.
The idea for Unirunners came when Mr Connell developed the app as a joke at the expense of Mr Clarke, who had always been sent on errands by his student pals because he was the only one who had a car.
Mr Connell said: “His friends would come to his room and ask him to give them a lift to the shop, which became a habit.
“I made them an app so they could just write a shopping list for Karim and one of his housemates spread it to another house. It expanded house by house.”
After redeveloping the app, it has since been opened more than 20,000 times, leading to more than 7,900 orders.
It was initially run by just Mr Clarke and Mr Connell with a car and a moped. By this summer’s exam season they were paying a network of 35 drivers and riders.
This year the company was approached by a group of venture capital investors but opted to try to raise £150,000 on crowdfunding website Seedrs to prove the interest in the service, in exchange for 20% equity in the business.
To secure the investment, the pair need to be pledged all of their £150,000 target, otherwise they get nothing. To view the crowdfunding campaign, which expires on September 9, visit www.seedrs.com/uni-runners