Household.sg is the brain child of Reuben Lee. Recently Reuben pitched at the CS3216 pitching session and the company was also featured few days ago at Youngupstart and the post is very nicely written.
Idea: Household aims to bring the whole tedious process of grocery shopping online. Basically, you sign up and browse through the items that you want to buy, you make the payment through paypal (Reuben is still working on the cash on delivery), choose a preferred delivery timeslot, and there you go. Value adding to busy professionals and working classes as they can do their online shopping even during work.
Revenue Model: Being the supply chain themselves, competing with established supermarkets such as NTUC Fair Price and Cold Storage.
Thoughts:
- Household is a brilliant idea because undoubtably, working adults nowadays do not have much time to do groceries shopping and having spent 1 year abroad in Shanghai working full time, I can totally relate to the frustration of running out of daily groceries whenever I need them, especially after a long day at work.
- The whole process of online groceries shopping is also very easy and convenient especially after the Facebook log in is enabled with Household, simplifying the process of user account sign up.
- Personally, I’m quite curious how does the Founder settle the logistics. Does he outsource the delivery to someone else or he has to do it himself (since there are multiple timeslots for delivery)?
- Since there are various items available on the site, what if there are users who buy a few items here and there? If thats the case, where does he get the bargaining power to to talk to the suppliers?
- Currently the delivery charge is at $7 for purchases less than $40. Personally, I think thats a little bit too expensive. Why $7? Why not $5 or $8?
- Maybe Househould could give more product information on the site such as expiry dates.
- I won’t be surprised if NTUC or Fairprice will acquire Household in the near future.
- Household could even launch their own deals column! Good way to clear away inventories.
Potentials: 5/5
Again, very excited to see how Household.sg grow. Hopefully the local supermarkets will continue to ignore the power of technology in enhancing the shopping experience for users, and Household would leverage on this to grow exponentially. Household is competing directly with already established grocery stores, which have their own online platforms as well, but they are under utilized. Household is targeting the working adults that are technologically savvy, which happens to make up quite a number of the workforce. Young adults like myself would definitely be open to new and fun online shopping platforms as compared to shopping at the traditional giant grocery stores.
Filed under: Startups to Watch Tagged: business model, CS3216, Entrepreneurship, Household.sg, online shopping, paypal, revenue model, Startup, startup to watch
