Changers of the courier game
SISOKA
MSIZWE
EET Priven Reddy, a 35-year-old entrepreneur and his business partner, Sandile Shezi. Together they are changing the game by making the courier business a paperless system. Disruptors in their own right, Reddy and Shezi have developed Shypar – the Uber of the delivery business.
Reddy has several business interests in technological companies.
His business partner, Shezi, is the major shareholder. They started Shypar, a company that sells franchises to people who own vehicles that are not older than 10 years.
These vehicles transport goods using the Shypar App to locate the pick-up point and the drop-off point. The idea of Shypar came about when Reddy wanted to send rugby match tickets from umhlanga to a friend in Sherwood. He decided to call an Uber because he was tired and was too lazy to drive. The idea then stuck. “The problem with doing that was these goods are not insured and Uber was not designed for that,” said Reddy. When he thought about how many people needed to send items out there, he started to work on building Shypar.
The great thing about Shypar in the courier industry is that once you request a driver to deliver, they pick your goods up in minutes and deliver in less than two hours, depending on traffic. Reddy says Shypar changes the entire face of the courier industry. “Normally when you have to send something, you have to book for a courier, wait for a code, go through paperwork and open an account. It’s a long process. With Shypar, once the app is downloaded, you can send your first request within a minute or two. That’s the beauty of it,” he said.
Reddy and Shezi wanted this business to create employment and give people an opportunity to empower themselves by becoming Shypar franchise owners. With that, they started to come across challenges. Some of the people who applied to work with them had criminal records.
“They didn’t think that we would do thorough background check. We can’t afford any driver to be delivering goods while being wanted for whatever crimes they did,” said Reddy.
The other challenge in their business was that some drivers did not understand that Shypar was still new therefore it could not get busy overnight. Reddy hopes that Shypar will grow to be the largest paperless courier in South Africa and he made that dream possible now that the company had started running.
The company works with 500 vehicles at the moment and its aiming to get 5 000 nationally.
“It is going to be the biggest and the largest courier in South Africa,” he said.
“We believe in running our business ethically, we don’t take any percentage of money from our drivers apart from the bank charges, all the money they make goes to them. We charge them a very minimum monthly fee which is R1000 to be part of the system,” said Reddy.
His motivation for this business is knowing that he is able to assist other people in putting food on the table and giving themselves a better life. His other drive for this business is that making money is easy, but making money the right way is difficult and he wants to make money the right way.
Reddy is not just a business man, but he is one that loves to learn. “I spend about 80% of my spare time empowering myself with knowledge. I do this because I think the more we learn, the more we can provide better solutions,” he said.
THESE INNOVATIVE BUSINESS PARTNERS HAVE STARTED THE UBER OF THE COURIER BUSINESS. SPOKE TO THEM.
REDDY’S BUSINESS TIPS:
Before you develop any application, you have to firstly understand the need for it and its market.
Do you have the capital to allow you to run it for a year without making a profit? If not, try to get funding. This is what most start-up businesses lack in South Africa.
Website: www.shypar.com