When Rayan Rahman saw the $150 price tag for shipping a pair of shoes from Virginia to a family member in Bangladesh, he debated just waiting until he or another family member happened to be going that way instead. The steep price for international shipping instead inspired Airposted, a new startup that connects international travelers with people willing to pay to get things moved around the world.
"It's a peer-to-peer international delivery platform," Airposted co-founder (and Rayan's cousin) Raisa Rahman said in an interview with DC Inno. "Someone overseas or going overseas buys something for someone else and brings it back. Airposted is the platform where the two connect, like Airbnb."
Airposted users share where and when they are traveling, or what they are looking for and where it can be bought. Then, they can search for one another to figure out who to speak with. They use the platform to negotiate what they buyer will pay the traveler, on top of the cost of whatever the traveler is picking up, plus taxes, and agree on a place to meet.
"The idea is that you have a little extra luggage space where you can put something," Rahman said. "After the deal is made, we hold the money in escrow until it's complete and then release it to the traveler."
For the company's part, they charge a five percent service charge, which covers the platform and the money handling. The company also makes suggestions about what fees are reasonable to charge by travelers, for instance $50 for a small package from New Dehli, India to the U.S. The website, recently revamped for the official launch, already has more than 2,000 posts on it from the months of beta testing, Rahman said, with more than 200 successful transactions in that time. The build-up in users comes from word of mouth, and has notably had a lot of growth in U.S. to Asia requests.
"The most common request is to bring American electronics to Asia," Rahman said. "But we've had requests all over, like Dubai and Buenos Aires. The demand for American goods is kind of expected because it's easier to get and cheaper here."
Airposted now has five full-time employees, and has begun raising a funding round after bootstrapping itself to get to this point. The current goal is to raise a $500,000 seed round in order to expand the company's reach and bring more people onto the platform. There isn't much in the way of competition for Airposted either. While Craigslist can offer listings for this kind of service, the nature of Craigslist makes that something of a crapshoot. And a couple of other startups with similar models are either regionally focused or are not yet off the ground.
"The most common request is to bring American electronics to Asia."
Having the entire process take place on the platform, with the money held until a satisfactory delivery, helps insulate Airposted from any potential problems between the people using the platform. All of the people are checked and verified as real, and while there's no insurance, if someone delivers a broken item or something else happens, the money will be refunded. Having the relevant links and descriptions on the site also ensures it's not used to for anything illegal or potentially problematic, although Rahman said nothing like that has come up as of yet.
"We have a much larger vision that goes beyond just the Web-based P2P platform," Rahman said. "There are a lot of ways we could evolve. Once we get bigger, we'll deal with that."
