COVID changes: stories of StartupDrive members that have changed and become stronger during a pandemic

In February, when the second StartupDrive acceleration program began, a development roadmap was developed with each of its participants. However, already in March it became clear that the pandemic had mixed plans and that something needed to be changed. We collected stories of four accelerator participants who were able to quickly adapt to the new reality and asked what they had done.
 


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Posted by Andrey Velesyuk

Suddenly, the era of the pandemic, different businesses are experiencing differently. Large companies that have successfully advanced along the path of digital transformation feel good. Gazprom Neft Digital Transformation Director Andrei Belevtsev at the Anti-Fragility. Online Conference How to survive the “perfect storm” of SKOLKOVO business school said the following: “When a crisis comes, decision-making in different companies is always accelerated. Digitalization is a conscious decision that some companies made quite a long time based on economic prerequisites. The current situation shows that these steps were correct and timely, the investment was justified. ”
 
In the medium and small business, those who can adapt quickly survive. For example, the Ulyanovsk TestGen, which specialized in genetic tests based on the polymerase chain reaction, is a highly accurate method of molecular genetic diagnosis. When the coronavirus COVID-19 happened and the WHO management recommended that the tests be performed by PCR, the company was not at a loss and created a prototype test system for the rapid diagnosis of coronavirus, based on their development. Microbusiness is quickly reoriented - Instagram is full of ads for tailoring masks from those who sewed children's clothes or dresses yesterday.
 
Startups have a harder time- they do not always have a run-in business model, large-scale implementations or a product that has been tested for years of work. At the same time, these are businesses with an already established vision and team that cannot completely redesign in one day. In the current crisis, their effectiveness is primarily determined by the ability to quickly adapt and find new opportunities for growth. We found four teams that demonstrated these abilities and asked to tell them exactly what they did.
 
What is StartupDrive?
 
The second acceleration program StartupDrive from Gazprom Neft was launched in early February. As a result of open recruitment, 10 startups from Russia, the UK and the Netherlands became participants. The program consists of individual work plans for each startup. The StartupDrive team conducts training or workshops on specific topics for each participant separately and only if necessary.
 
Each startup can participate remotely from its business location. The program is designed for three months, according to its results it will be determined in what form the cooperation will continue - partnership, revenue sharing (profit sharing) or entry into the company's capital. Gazprom Neft may also be a partner in transactions with venture capital funds.
 
Ucar: Entered the B2C market and improve the competencies of the team
 
What it is : a car service without its infrastructure and employees
Who says : Ilyas Taytsenov and Maxim Sunyaikin, founders
 


We constantly look at the opportunities that arise in the market and think about how we can apply them to our business models. By the very beginning of the pandemic, we, together with Gazprom Neft, a fuel sales unit, launched a service for private customers, before that Ucar worked only with B2B. Plus for corporate clients, we began to do disinfection. When the situation with coronavirus unfolded, two possibilities became apparent: food delivery and machine disinfection.
 
Then we came to the conclusion that it is possible to use for corporate car delivery services our corporate clients, car sharing companies, which have suspended their work. Our performers got the opportunity to earn money, now they cover the demand for delivery during peak hours of workload. The second find was car disinfection.
 
All this together led us to the idea that right now we need to turn in the direction of the B2C market. At the end of February, when we launched the first orders for private individuals with Gazprom Neft, we had 10 orders a day. Now, on average, we make 700-800 orders per day per day. This helped us a lot to maintain our momentum and engage the whole team - no one is idle, we continue to pay them a salary.
 
Surely the disinfection service will be in demand for some time after the pandemic, but two other points are important to us. Firstly, we learned to work with a large number of private clients in a short time. Secondly, we are developing a customer base, which we plan to monetize in the future.
 
Despite the fact that Ucar is a start-up, we have long lived in a frugal manner and reached net profit. Therefore, we approached a pandemic with normal cache reserves and now we see the possibilities to remake the existing market for ourselves.

Another important point, we have a great team. We spent a lot of time and effort on her selection, but in the end they are real “pirates with a thirst for profit” (AARRR - ed.), Who will never miss their opportunities.

You need to be positive and see opportunities in a crisis. Yes, we are worried, but we see what we can earn money on now. On the new service, which appeared due to the coronavirus, we gathered a customer base, learned how to handle large client flows and checked a lot of our developments. And we plan to “take advantage” of the crisis in order to increase the competence of the team. 

Cårporate: Helps companies save and protect the health of employees
 
What it is : A service to find travel companions among colleagues
Where to look at the product in more detail : https://carporate.co/  
Who says : Roman Sokolov, CEO

 

Cårporate are travel companions. We, as a blablacar, are only safer, because the pool of potential fellow travelers is limited to employees of one company, people who a priori have a credit of trust to each other. When you find fellow travelers with Cårporate, you can be sure that the unknown will not come near you, it will always be a colleague, a person who shares the same values ​​and obeys the same corporate rules as you. By allowing employees to travel together between offices, production sites and airports, we help companies reduce travel costs and increase employee engagement. We were just preparing to test a number of hypotheses related to these parameters when COVID-19 became the main agenda. Our users switched to remote work, the number of trips to work decreased, and we realizedthat our value proposition needs to be changed.
 
The companies lost the pain with transportation costs, but a new one appeared - how to make sure that employees, still forced to go to the office and to the factory, remain healthy. At home and in the workplace, contacts with the “external environment” are minimal, but what about the road to and from work? Many employees use public transportation, and the key risk of such trips is their presence in crowded places.

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 Fundamentally, our product has not changed, because COVID-19 will end, and companies will again begin to save on transportation costs, and employees will strengthen cross-team ties. Moreover, there is a feeling that quarantine will be removed at some point, and the risks associated with being in public places will remain. And in this situation, the lessons of the pandemic period will be very useful to us to help our customers. And already in the finally “peace” time, we will come with a skeleton of super-loyal users, super-change agents who, having tried the concept of voluntary sharing of trips, will carry it to their teams.

The flexibility and constant search for new opportunities, probably, is the thinking of a startup. Therefore, we regarded the pandemic as follows: okay, we have a new introduction, let's see what we can do with it and how to use it in order to create additional value for our customers and users.

Proil: Switch to logistics companies and retailers.
 
What it is : a service for mobile refueling of corporate and private clients with delivery.
Where to look at the product in more detail :   website (for business), application for users.
Who says : Leon Kuhilava, CEO

 

We have been working in the B2B market for two years, so the pandemic did not put us in a stupor. But our main customers were car sharing, and when they stopped working it became clear that now everything is bad, we need to urgently come up with something. We quickly assembled the whole team and started a brainstorming session. And two days later a new proposal was completely ready.
 
We are engaged in the supply of fuel, and in a pandemic, logistics companies and large retail retailers have stable demand for it. We invited them to install an automated mini-gas station directly on the territory, taking into account all the requirements of fire and industrial safety. It takes no more than a week to deploy the solution. Moreover, customers do not need to worry about delivering fuel to his territory, they pay only for what they refuel.
 
Another important point, we exclude the moment of employee fraud. If a person refills 40 liters on a card and pours 5 liters into a canister from them, the employer will not track this. Video monitoring systems work at our gas stations, and if the operator sees that a person is doing strange manipulations with a gun, we contact the client and show him the video.
 

As a result, our proposal worked with a bang. We have already received a positive response from customers, because thanks to us they buy fuel about 15% below the market — it saves more than 5 rubles per liter. This is cheaper than the maximum discount on special conditions.

I liked the reaction of the StartupDrive team, because when the difficulties started, we honestly told them that now our priority is not to increase sales, but simply to survive. We were told that they would help with a new direction, help attract B2B clients. Moreover, our tracker Maxim Menshchikov already refers to working with us more than just tracking mentoring - he sincerely worries about us, helps us all he can. It is very pleasant to realize.
 
Perhaps if quarantine were two years ago, we would be crazy. Now we have experience in the market and when we are aware of the problems, the whole team asks only one question: how can it be solved? Of course, pressure has increased on the founders of the company, but we are successfully coping with it. And in my opinion, we must also cope with the new challenge that the pandemic threw us.

Road.Travel: We set up a focus and concentrated on one direction
 
What it is : a platform for planning and booking car trips
Where to look at the product in more detail : trips around the world , trips around Russia
Who says : Valery Britaus, co-founder
 


At the very beginning, together with the StartupDrive team, we put forward several hypotheses - we planned to engage in both domestic and inbound tourism. Given that we have experience in European markets, it seemed interesting to combine the creation of content in Russia with inbound tourism. But we realized early on that a big change awaits us all - after my colleague’s trip to Amsterdam, to the office of Amadeus, one of the largest reservation systems in the world. It was the middle of March, and according to the mood of the people there, it was clear that something big was coming. And you need to quickly make adjustments so as not to disperse in all directions.
 
As soon as the pandemic unfolded and countries began to close their borders en masse, it became completely clear that there would be a problem with inbound tourism - opening borders is much more difficult and longer. In addition, it is not clear what will happen to air travel. Thus, we abandoned the inbound tourism hypothesis.
 
Therefore, we decided to focus on domestic tourism, or rather, on local, road travel around major Russian cities. Cars will surely now be considered the safest mode of transport in terms of social distance. We traditionally start with the largest cities in the country: Moscow and St. Petersburg. The guys from StartupDrive gathered a workshop where they invited outside experts together with the accelerator staff, and we worked out our hypothesis in more detail.
 
What is important, our routes have always included places to stay, restaurants, unusual museums - most of them are small and medium-sized businesses. The one who is suffering right now and whom we would like to help on our own. In addition, we realized that it would be important for local tourist authorities to promote their region, so now our team is actively working in this direction. And this only enhances our focus.
 

According to expert estimates of market participants, after the removal of the self-isolation regime, the first trips that people will make are with a range of 400 km for about 2-3 days, so right now we are working on precisely these scenarios.

And when the pandemic is over, we plan to return to work with inbound tourism. Because while we will develop internal directions, increase content and run through travel scenarios, we will only strengthen the position for entry.
 
Thanks to these changes, our decision has become more sustainable in my opinion, the stressful situation has helped us focus on goals, formulate ideas and verify them both by the tourism business and the authorities. I hope the market will also confirm them in the end.