A rabbit-analysis is an analysis where we take a look at how an industry changed or is currently changing due to a disruption or a change in the technological landscape. The analogy comes from how rabbits disrupted the ecosystem in Australia during the 18th century (reference Stop! Nobody move!).
First of all it is important that we clearly define what our “Australia” is. What exactly is the industry that is being changed by digitalisation and further development in technology?
We are taking a look at the process of borrowing and lending out items, specifically to people in the neighbourhood. Our case is similar to when Uber first came on the market. They invented a shared economy approach to transportation, so in a way, they created their own industry. However, they still had to compete with traditional taxi companies, only later on gaining direct competitors like Lyft. Similarly, we are one of the first to apply the shared economy approach to borrowing and lending. However, just like Uber was, we are also competing with the status quo, only our “traditional taxi companies” come in the form of direct interaction, chat groups and facebook posts. As you probably noticed, some of these are already a product of digitalisation, but we believe we can go even further.
Borrowing household items between neighbours has a long history, as it is very useful for items and tools that one does not use often. Before the digital era, if one wanted to request something from their neighbours they had to physically knock on their door and ask. This could have been good or bad depending on the relationship with your neighbours, but one thing is for certain: it limited the number of people you could easily reach if you were in need of something. This may not have been a problem if the tool you are looking for was a common household item, but if it was more rare you may have needed to spend a lot of time and effort to get the thing you need, if you could even get it at all.
In the last decade, with the arrival of social media, a lot of social interactions have moved to the digital space. It was not different for the process of borrowing and lending out items. With the existence of WhatsApp group chats, facebook groups, etc., it had become quite easy to reach a lot more people at once for something if you were in need. For example, if you were in a WhatsApp group with the other people on your apartment floor and you needed a hammer, you would send a message in the group chat asking if anyone had a hammer that you could borrow. Although this was a bit more convenient, a lot of things could still be improved.
First of all, we would like to limit the amount of notifications one receives. While being in all those chat groups can be handy, it very quickly turns into a massive wave of spam notifications. Apart from the sheer volume of these notifications, the structure is also a problem. There is no filtering. If you are part of the group, you get a notification for every single message. Maybe you are not interested or you do not have time to follow a chat of people joking around and you only want to receive notifications that are important to you. All these problems can in some cases even lead to leaving the groups or turning off the notifications altogether. When that happens, these groups lose all their utility. There is no “in between” for receiving notifications.
It can also be hard to find all of these groups in the first place. If you just arrived in a new apartment, where do you find the chat group for your building or floor, if there even is one? Sometimes you can go for weeks or months without even knowing that one of these chats or groups exist. Furthermore, groups are likely created for a street or an apartment building, so unless you are in all group chats in the neighbourhood, it is very unlikely that you are able to contact everyone within 500 meters, if you wanted to.
Another problem more specifically related to borrowing and lending through these apps is that there is no overview for the process. Someone asks for something, maybe a couple messages later someone responds, the item gets exchanged, a ton of other messages appear in the chat, by the time the item needs to be returned it is hard to find the original conversation. It is chaotic to keep track of borrowed and lent out items, when the transactions took place and when the items should be returned, and which people are involved.
Trust is another issue. Are you willing to lend out items to someone you have never met, that happens to live in the same building as you, if there is no security net in place? Maybe something that has no value, however if we are talking about a more expensive item you might think twice. It is very hard to keep people accountable through the chats alone or set a hard deadline as to when the item should be returned.
And to top if all off, convenience. Going through all sorts of dispersed channels asking in chat form for an item can be annoying and time consuming. It would be nice to streamline this process on a centralised platform.
Our service aims to resolve all these problems, and more.
So, how does our service in the form of an app go about solving all the problems in the previous section? We will go over them one by one, and explain exactly what we have come up with.
With Kitley we aim at reducing notifications in two ways: we streamlined the whole process of borrowing and lending so that less communication is needed in general, and we implemented a system that limits notifications to the ones that are necessary and helpful to you personally. The way we streamlined the process is by allowing users to list items they are willing to lend out, and when a user wants to borrowing something, all she has to do is search for an item and choose a maximum distance she has to go to pick it up, and choose the item from the list that appears. The other user receives a notification that someone wants to borrow their item and a private chat opens up where they can make arrangements. One notification, no spam. Of course this process is limited, what if I want to borrow something that is not listed, or if it is something I need urgently and do not have the time to go far to pick it up. For that, we implemented a pinging system. When you need an item quickly, you can ping people in your area to ask if they can lend you this item. Pings cost a certain amount of money so they will not be spammed. Receiving these pings is beneficial to you, because if you respond to a ping, you get in-app currency, which you can use towards buying pings yourself. This whole process limits notifications to situations where it is absolutely necessary or when it can benefit both users.
Kitley also circumvents the problem of having to find and be a part of a whole slew of different groups and group chats. All you have to do is download Kitley and you can immediately start borrowing.
Kitley offers a clear overview of what items you are currently lending out, to whom you are lending them to, and when you expect them to be returned. Similarly, it also keeps track of what you are borrowing. This removes a lot of stress and uncertainty from the whole process.
When it comes to trust, Kitley aims at improving this aspect implicitly in three ways. Firstly, Kitley sets clear boundaries for how long an item can be borrowed. The service also makes use of a rating system that can show other users how trustworthy a certain user is. Finally, customers are registered and are required to pay late fees if an item is not returned on time. Kitley will partner with enforcing companies that will ensure that breaking the rules will have consequences. This will be easier in certain countries compared to others, for example in Sweden and Finland we could ask for personal numbers for identification, while in other countries some other methods need to be employed. Of course measures have to be taken to prevent people from signing up with a personal number that is not theirs.
Lastly, convenience. Kitley streamlines the whole process of borrowing and lending, it removes the need for tons of different group chats, everything is centralised on one app. When you want to borrow an item, you do not have to ask for it in multiple channels and hope you get a response, you can open the app and look through what is available in your area to see if the thing you need is listed. If it is, then great, you already achieved your goal. If it is not, no problem, you can ping for it and see if you can get it that way. Very quick and very convenient.
Sources indicate that shared economies are on the rise, and as mentioned before our app falls into this category. With the increased digitalisation of the world, it has become easier than ever to connect communities directly with each other. We expect that our app and others of the sort will only be more prevalent in the future. With that in mind, we might expand the app to include other things that fit into this framework in the future.
A big way that the app might change is by increasing the type of items that can be borrowed and adding services on top of items. Similarly to lending out a tool, someone could list a service they are willing to perform, or look for services, or ping to see if someone can help them by providing a service. Money could of course be attached to these services, making them worthwhile.
Kitley could also partner up with certain manufacturing and renting companies to be able to provide a minimum of tools that can be rented with pings as a currency in certain areas.
Thank you for your attention. Do not forget to start using Kitley now!
