Share-pa

With increasing e-commerce reach and decreasing costs, consumption is increasing and so is waste. Poorer countries in the developing world lack adequate waste management policies or systems or trash collection services to properly manage their waste. There is a need to reduce the environmental footprint of our consumption. The vision of share-pa.com is to encourage sharing through online and mobile platforms to reduce resource footprint, costs and the waste generated with specific focus on developing nations. The aspiration for share-pa is to be a viable alternative to retail e-commerce platforms for people’s daily needs. By 2023, a million active members would be added to share-pa starting with India and potentially extending to the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam. With an active million users, share-pa can potentially stop 1000s of tons of waste going into landfills in the developing world every year; also saving the resources required to manufacture those goods.

In a society where we consume 1.7 times the bio-capacity of earth, it makes sense to increasingly share and pool our resources. In an emerging market like India, where we plan to launch the platform initially, the problem is urgent. With increasing internet penetration, India already has about 120 million online shoppers, 39% of whom shop on a weekly basis. India is expected to generate 165 million tons of trash annually by 2030, of which currently India has the capacity to treat only about 12 million tons. Most of the trash goes into massive landfills and these landfills also generate toxic fumes and contaminate ground water.

While share-pa won't necessarily solve these problems on it own, it would extend the life of items giving more time for the stressed infrastructure of the cities to deal with the issue of increasing waste. This platform would promote the ethos of sharing instead of buying, in addition to a multitude of environmental and social outcomes like - 

- Lesser waste going into the landfills

- Lower carbon, water, pollution footprints

- Lesser plastic packaging going into the rivers and oceans 

- A strong community of like minded people that practice mindful consumption

The target users can be classified into two broad categories –

1.     “Woke” populace – The segment of the population that is becoming increasingly aware of the need for sustainability. An estimate of this population, based on social media behavior, is roughly 600,000 people.  These users, being aware of the impact of their footprints and waste, would be easier to bring on to the platform.

2.     Students, professionals - The target users would be the 150 million (approx) students, professionals and others with daily access to internet in India,  and more specifically the subset of online shoppers who are estimated to be 120 million. This group would need a targeted approach to change behavior from purchasing to sharing.

These two categories would primarily reside in Tier-1 cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, where there is high consumption and extend to Tier 2 cities in 2020.

Share-pa currently has about 1100 registered users.

By 2023, a million active members would be added to share-pa starting with India. From the year 2020, share-pa would begin reaching out to other geographies including Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Share-pa.com is a concerted effort to use technology to reduce humanity’s resource footprint on the planet. It represents the passion of its founders to build global solutions for conserving the environment. The idea of share-pa is to facilitate and encourage sharing through an easy to use online and mobile platform focused on developing countries. The critical challenge in this geography is how to build circles of trust to bring about behavioral change i.e. why buy when you can share? The USP of the product is the method of using existing networks and building comprehensive ratings for borrowers and lenders to build a larger community to enable sharing of items.

Some of the salient features of the platform:

• Allows only lending, borrowing and give-away, not selling or renting

• Borrowing searches are optimized by the proximity of a lender (friend, friend's friend, co-worker, affiliations to same hobby groups etc.)

• Allows users to broadcast the requests in a city/ locality 

• Allows users to give-away the items that they might not need

• Allows lenders and borrowers to provide rating and testimonials to each other, after the transactions

• Allows users to create communities for localities, universities, work places, hobby groups to facilitate sharing

• Gives badges to very active users, which can be redeemed to avail discounts on sustainable products and services (work in progress) 

Going forward, technology based value added services would be added to the repertoire including low carbon footprint delivery service, insurance for high value items shared, discounts on green products & services to incentivise users to share/give-away items.

share-pa is an innovative solution, which not only makes it easier to share but also encourages sharing among peers.

The key aspects which distinguish share-pa from other sharing platforms are -

• None of the sharing platforms at present are built for the developing countries. In developing countries, trust among members of the society is something that needs to be established. Cities in these countries are an amalgamation of persons from different regions, languages, social strata. share-pa builds this by its unique feature of rating and feedback which increases accountability and trust.
• Share-pa is a model that is rooted in sustainability and minimalism, that is also expected to generate revenues through its innovative, affordable value-added services.
• Share-pa also aims to make sharing more convenient – delivery, insurance, redemption of badges for sustainable products and services. Its not only about encouraging people who are aware of the need for sustainable practices, but also to being about a behavioral change in the reluctant population.
• Share-pa is also more convenient than other such platforms because of the user-friendly website and mobile-application. At the heart of share-pa is technology, to both ease the experience as well as enhance matching of supply and demand. One such feature, is the broadcast feature, which is an intuitive way of ensuring that users can access items even if they are not listed on the platform.

Technology is at the core of share-pa. The tech strategy of share-pa is two fold - 

1. Already implemented - user-friendly website and mobile application. The mobile application will roll-out in August 2019. The current technology leverages social networks and a feedback loop on each transaction which feeds into subsequent transactions. share-pa also uses simple but intuitive technologies solutions to improve the experience of the user, such as broadcast, alerts and user-friendly GUI. 

2. Plan for the future - Based on the feedback from a control group of users, the platform is being refined continuously to simplify the experience. The future versions of share-pa (both web and mobile) would use the data of the transactions to better match the lenders and borrowers, spatial matching and also targeted marketing. We also intend to integrate the platform with other technology based platforms which provide sustainable delivery and insurance services. 

Over 100,000 metric tonnes of waste is generated every day in India. Landfills are being stretched to the limit, and the continuously mounting garbage is contaminating air, soil and groundwater. Take for instance textile waste. Most clothes are made from materials like polyester, which is cheaper than natural fibres like cotton. These clothes have a shorter shelf life and recycling them is not economically viable. It takes 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt, enough to meet the average person’s drinking needs for two-and-a-half years. Recycling, though is not a permanent solution. What we need is to increase reuse and extend life of a product.

In another example, take electronic products. 30% of Indians hoard 3-4 unused electronics items and 20% Indians hoard more than 5 unused electronic items.

Impact of share-pa :  Building communities that would propagate the ethos of sharing and increase the lifetime of products. For instance, extending the life of a garment by an extra nine months reduces its environmental impact by 20-30%. This is just a representation of the impact of extending the life of clothing and electronic items. What this also means is that the platform  would lead to a greater awareness on the need for lesser consumption and would be a CALL to ACTION for people to do more for the environment.

1 million users by 2023 with an average of 10 transaction per year per user.

We plan to have about 100,000 users within a year and about a million users by 2023. By then we expect to register thousands of transactions per week on Share-pa leading considerable footprint and waste reduction. We expect share-pa to become a serious competitor to e-commerce websites within next 5 years. 

Following are the key challenges we feel we would face in achieving our goals:

1. Incentives for lending - In developing country like India, there won't be dearth of borrowers, but lenders might need additional incentive to share in absence of renting/ selling option

2. Quality and convenience - E-commerce provides certain quality assurances and convenience of home delivery. If Share-pa is to emerge as a serious competitor, it needs to match this.

3. Financial sustainability - Share-pa's no renting or selling policy limits the direct user payments based revenue model.    

1. Incentives for lending - Share-pa currently awards badges to users for certain number of transactions. In future we would offer discounts on green products and services that can be redeemed against the badges. WE are already in conversation with few organisations for partnerships on this.

2. Quality and convenience - We plan to offer un-bundled insurance and low cost, low footprint delivery service for Shared products. This will help overcome the barrier of physical proximity among users and provide certain guarantees against damage of goods.

3. Financial sustainability - We plan to develop revenue streams through partnerships mentioned above for selling green products and services, insurance and delivery. We also also considering a one time/ annual membership fee per user, once Shara-pa becomes mainstream    

Core team - 3 members part-time (1 - product design and strategy, 1 - social media, marketing and strategy, 1 - data and behavioral analytics)

Contractors & developers - Promatics Technologies Private Limited - 3

The team is passionate about the issue that share-pa addresses. The team members themselves are moving towards a minimalist lifestyle which embodies the vision for share-pa. 

The team has a combined experience of more than 30 years in evironmental conservation, social development, business management and systems development; working with World Wildlife Fund, United Nations Development Program and leading technology firms. This puts the team in a unique position of having in-depth understanding of the problem and a deep passion for achieving impact. In addition, the team has built keen understanding of the behavioral dynamics of sharing in a society.

The team members were classmates in business school (Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, one of the top 5 business schools in India) and have known each other for the last 11 years. The product development, strategy and customer engagement is being led by Sanket Bhale and Gayatri Rao. The system architecture and technology development is being led by Amod Verma and the development is carried out by a technology partner agency. 

share-pa is a community based application and therefore, partnerships with both community based organizations and companies is key.  share-pa has a well-defined strategy to continuously work with organizations. Recently, efforts have been initiated to build partnerships with companies to implement share-pa within these companies is been recently been taken up.

Partnership / engagement activities with community based organizations has already begun. For instance, share-pa engaged with "The minimalists of Delhi" to organize and participate in events to get feedback and encourage use of the application.

We are also in conversation with few like-minded organisations that provide green products and services to enable redeeming of share-pa badges for discounts.

Currently in it's development and growth phase, Share-pa is funded by the founders. 

No renting or selling model limits Share-pa's ability charge its user directly for transactions. Following are the key revenue models we are considering future: 

1. Annual/ one-time memberships fees from users

2. Selling discounted sustainable products and services against badges earned by users (revenue from partners on sale)

3. Partnerships for sale insurance on shared items and delivery services (revenue from the commission on the price of insurance and delivery services) 

We expect to establish a clear revenue model for share-pa in next 2 years and to break-even by the 3rd year. 

Beyond this, profits made by Share-pa would be invested into it's own growth and improvement.   

Primarily we are applying for Solve for the platform it would provide to test refine and showcase the solution we are proposing.

It would also help us connect to other like-minded people and partners that can help us make Share-pa a success.

1. Other organisations that provide sustainable products or services

2. Social media and outreach partners

3. Urban community based enterprises that operate developing countries

4. Technology companies  

Additional funding that the GM prize would provide will enable us to scale-up rapidly.

We would invest the price money in following key activities:

1. Product improvement through the use of technology such as behavioral design, social networks and AI

2. Social media, partnerships and outreach

3. Developing new revenue stream to achieve financial sustainability