CRISIS HEROES

We are developing an AI-based marketplace for matching people and companies who can help each other during the pandemic crisis.

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Problem:

The pandemic crisis has caused large delays in buying food, due to the introduced limits, the customers have to wait in long queues and still risk being infected. Many of them switched to buying food products online but it is also time-consuming and caused huge delays, so retail companies are now struggling to organize their logistics in an optimal way. On the other hand, some people lost their jobs or their salaries are lower so they might be more interested in helping others, e.g., with food delivery, and being paid.

A solution for helping everyone during the pandemic crisis? Yes, it exists!

Solution:

Crisis Heroes is an intelligent virtual marketplace optimally matching people and organizations who can help each other, especially during the pandemic crisis. There are many activities you can do through this platform, but it focuses on shopping and matching buyers with retailers and deliverers.

We built intuitive mobile and web interfaces. Some people may be unable to use them, so we introduced speech technology (thanks to Google Speech Recognition, Google Text-To-Speech and Google Natural Language API: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CUDum0N0jk). Thanks to this, the customers will be able to submit their orders also by phone. After specifying their needs, the platform will recommend the best products which they can buy, tailored to their needs using AI recommendation engine, by taking into account offers from many retails stores, cost and time of delivery. The platform will optimally match the customer with a person (or company) who can deliver the bought products in a preferred time and with a preferred cost.

What we did during the hackathon:

What do we want to do next?

We have to implement some additional functionalities so that the retail stores will be able to easily upload their offer to the platform, the logistic companies and individuals will be also able to easily upload their availability and offer. The platform will try to match customers with the orders and deliverers (Heroes) optimally, by aggregating many orders and reducing travelled distance, cost and time of delivery (solving the so-called Capacitated Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows - PDPTW). We've started building a community of users and heroes, so they can potentially give recommendations in order to build the credibility of Heroes and trust. Our Heroes may earn additional money and have extra income which may be very important to many people who have recently lost their jobs or their salary was decreased. Retailers and producers may still sell their products without needing to build their own online store or organizing their own delivery fleet (or relying on external delivery companies which already can't handle the existing demand).

Later we can also make the transactions more secure and transparent using the Blockchain technology. Our platform my help make the supply chain more efficient, digitalized and sustainable which may be especially important also after the crisis. All in all, the solution may be valuable also after the crisis and may revolutionize the supply chain and last-mile delivery (in a long term, the Heroes may be also substituted by self-driving cars, robots or delivery drones).

The solution's impact to the crisis and after the crisis

Our platform and its interfaces (web, mobile, phone) will help people make remote shopping much faster (without queues and waiting long for delivery), easier (remotely and with a support of AI) and safer (without risking infections), potentially also cheaper by letting the users easily compare the offers from many retailers and by recommending the best products and matching them with available deliverers. The retail shops can organize their last-mile delivery much easier and faster, the deliverers will be better organized and many people may have some additional earnings just by helping their neighbours. Thanks to using optimization algorithms which can solve the so-called Capacitated Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows, we can make the food supply chain more efficient and sustainable (also after the crisis), thanks to reducing the negative environmental impact. The supply chain will be more digitalized. The trust, reliability and credibility may be strengthened in the future thanks to using Blockchain technology.

The necessities in order to continue the project:

  • implementing the remaining functionalities -> moving the project from o prototype to the IX technology readiness level
  • establishing collaboration with stores
  • establishing collaboration with heroes
  • acquiring cloud resources (computing infrastructure + Google Speech API, Google Natural Language API)
  • integration of a payment system

Business model & market:

Our business model assumes a customized membership fee. Later, we can also offer advertisements for stores. In Poland alone almost 80000 people are now quarantined, 10 million are in the risk group. Our solution is unique compared to the competition and thanks to all of its functionalities, it will be useful also after the crisis.

Based on our survey, 37% of people declare they may need help in day-to-day tasks. We’ve also initiated a Facebook group where we have gathered a couple of potential heroes and users. Also, our idea won a global virtual hackathon Hack-Covid-19. The next step is to contact potential partners (e.g., retail stores).

See our Lean Canvas: https://canvanizer.com/canvas/rfd7VEuzmbRzY.

Team:

Our team members worked for companies like Microsoft or Google, co-founded 3 startups, worked in 5 more and mentored more than 50.

If you would like to support us, feel free to contact us: crisis.heroes@gmail.com! Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much!

Links:

Pitch video: https://youtu.be/TUXXWP6yDk4

Website: https://crisisheroes.store

Demo of mobile app:

Demo video of mobile app: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CUDum0N0jk

Lean Canvas: https://canvanizer.com/canvas/rfd7VEuzmbRzY.

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