Ignition

Overview

One of the toughest challenges everyone is currently facing is the COVID-19 pandemic. This has forced many businesses to rely on regular customers and outsource most of the profits to third party apps to keep their doors open.

After days of research we have concluded that these third-party apps take away most of the profits, therefore adding more water to an already sinking ship. To help these struggling businesses we have come up with a new strategy that cuts most of the fees associated with these third-party apps. We’ve titled this new strategy Ignition.

Ignition essentially cuts out the middleman of delivery driver apps to connect drivers directly to restaurants. The format is similar to freelancing sites like Upwork and will allow drivers and restaurants to form temporary contracts spanning anywhere from a few hours to a week. Overall, this will eliminate any hidden fees associated with third-party apps, helping to save costs with both drivers and businesses.

Team Members

• Rebecca Qin (Project Manager ,Business Analyst @ Indiana University)

• Morgan Huber (Business Analyst @ Purdue)

• Zach Hazelett (Product Management, Marketing @ Indiana University)

• Rodrigo Andujar Lugo (Software Developer, IT/Cybersecurity @ IUPUI)

• Harrison Walker (IT/Cybersecurity, Data Science @ Indiana University)

How did you decide on this customer segment, problem, and solution?

After several days of research on restaurants and third-party apps, we learned that these platforms sometimes take more than 50% of the revenue from the restaurants, and majority of the revenue generated by drivers is through tips.

Based on our research, we decided to come up with a new system that helps both businesses and drivers be able to generate more income. This is achieved by switching from the normal pay per delivery to a system of pay by hour; similar to places that have their own delivery drivers. This helps businesses avoid having go through the process of hiring a driver and helps them spend less on these third-party fees.

How did your team build and iterate on the solution?

Our team started building this solution after having done research, environmental analysis, and a business model. Then we decided the best solution would be a web application. Having decided on a solution our PRO squad started building the web application. We found that to save time and display general information quicker we could use a website builder to create a simple landing page. After creating the landing page, the team started working on the web application hosted on Heroku.