Order Souvenirs Globally With Grabr

Daria Rebenok and Artem Fedyaev have come together to help travellers make money on the trips they take by delivering products from around the world. Sounds pretty cool, right? 

Daria and Artem founded Grabr for two different types of people. Shoppers – people who want to get something from abroad because it’s cheaper, they can’t find it in their hometown or because it’s something rare and sentimental in value. Travellers – people who buy and deliver these product while making money on each delivery.

Daria and Artem are part of our San Francisco chapter and have shared with us today a little bit of history about their startup and some tips behind creating a successful brand.

What inspired you to create this startup?

Personal experiences inspired us to create this startup. We travel a lot and have always been asked to bring something back from our trip. After realizing that most of the travelers bring things in their suitcases anyway, we decided to make it more organized and safe. By building our website and app and turning it into a community we have been able to achieve this. We really saw the demand that was not yet fulfilled and saw empty spaces in travelers suitcases that could be monetised. Our startup is really about crowd-sourcing international shopping and delivery across borders.

How did you build your startup?

We raised some initial funding, gathered a really strong team and built our basic website and IOS app. Main features include: placing orders, making an offer and connecting the users with a payment system and a messenger.

How is your startup disrupting the travel scene today?

We are one of the first startups to allow travellers who are going places anyway to make money off of the empty space in their luggage.

How did you get your startup off the ground and gaining traction?

Primarily social media and the word of mouth. After someone orders something once, they come back. Same goes for travellers, as soon as they deliver something and get payment into their bank account, they want to do it again.

How is your startup changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

Travel is expensive and we are creating an opportunity to make travel more affordable. If your dream is to go to Paris for a weekend, and you don’t have enough savings to afford it, you can go to our site, pick up a few things that people want delivered and away you go.

Do you have any tips for new entrepreneurs who want to create a successful startup?

If you have an idea that you really believe in, test it out. Start by talking to friends and family; then friends of friends, and see if they get what you are trying to solve. Try to put a prototype together that you could test with people outside your network. Put a landing page together explaining what is it that you are trying to do, add a simple subscription form, see if people are willing to subscribe – this is your proof of concept.

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. Connect with Grabr on Travel Massive, Facebook and Twitter.