We are preparing to launch in other countries- Liki24.com
The hero of the episode is Anton Avrinsky, CEO and co-founder of Liki24.com. Anton told AIN.UA why the situation around him is difficult for his company, although it would seem that everyone buys medicine. The problems of rapid growth have not been eliminated, in addition, the company faces the same problems as everyone else: queues, shortages of medicines, etc.
You can also listen to the episode on the platforms of Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Spotify, Overcast. Below is the text version.
Partners of the podcast "Business in Crisis" - the international technology holding TECHIIA, as well as the country's largest telecommunications operator "Kyivstar".
How are you doing now? From the outside, it may seem that you can open a bottle of champagne almost every day: the drug market is growing incredibly, and so is your business.
The business is really growing, it's true. It grows somewhere twice as fast as it grew before. But we grew well before the quarantine period: in 2019 we grew 6 times, taking into account seasonality. In December we grew by 30%, in January - by 35%, even more in February. Growth, apparently, was without quarantine.
Now, obviously, we are growing even faster. But there is no time or desire to open champagne at all. Our goal today is to provide the highest quality service, and it's not so easy when you grow twice a week. It is difficult to provide good service when the whole system is set up for X orders, and you have 3X orders. Therefore, our goal is, first of all, to do our job well, that current customers have become our loyal users in the future. We want to be a service that is recommended to friends, so this is now our main goal.
Scale fast is also not the easiest task. Tell us about the main difficulties or challenges you and your team now face.
Our biggest challenge is to build "uninhabited" technology: we make a product that should have a minimum of processing space for some human processes. And when we have, say, X volume of orders, we say we have a number of people who process something. And when orders become 3X, you can't take 3X people at once: they need to be trained, but this process takes weeks or even months to become high quality. Therefore, among the challenges that exist now is a super-accelerated transition to process automation.
In essence, we make technology when the system itself makes certain decisions for the person, does some data processing and communicates with customers. A good example is when you call a car in Uber, but you have no communication. We have a similar model, but a little more complicated. It's not easy to "go from point A to point B" with one driver. The order consists of many goods, these many goods need to be found in many pharmacies, to communicate with several couriers who do it. It's a complex system and we make it work without people.
It used to work in 80% of cases, and the remaining 20% required some human processing. Now these 20% have become extremely large, so we have to use the Pareto principle that we use for ourselves: among these 20% to highlight the most important, which will cover 80% of these 20%.
How much have people grown in the last month?
The core team has hardly grown because there is no time to grow. So far, we have grown only by hours, unfortunately. But we have two products: delivery and the "Take it yourself" option, when we suggest the nearest pharmacy where there is the necessary medicine. So in the first case, when it comes to delivery, the logistics department has almost doubled, by about 80%.
Is the number of orders you are currently processing your maximum? Will you not be able to process more orders or is there still a margin of safety?
As demand grew, we really had to make some unpopular decisions. The fact is that there are customers who can order 80 items that need to be collected in 20 pharmacies, some drugs are quite rare. Such an order can greatly slow us down. Therefore, we limited people in the number of ordered positions or did not allow to choose super-rare positions. We have limited some of our customers to fulfill orders for 95% of others.
Our capacity has increased 5 times since the beginning of quarantine. We can do much more than we could before. And we continue to improve processes, increase efficiency.
There are two limitations that I think can greatly weaken you. The first is that pharmacies do not bring the drugs that customers need. The second is the limitations: when there is a queue at the pharmacy, the courier has to wait. How much does it limit your growth?
It's less now, but the last two weeks of March have been terrible. Couriers in pharmacies could not get an order, in the pharmacies themselves there were problems with the availability of drugs and tracking of leftovers: first they said that the drug is there, and then it turned out that it was not.
We rebuilt the processes and informed people about possible delays and problems, but not everyone was understanding. This is difficult because we are very responsible about quality and when we can't do something, it goes very deep through us.
You can also listen to the episode on the platforms of Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Spotify, Overcast. Below is the text version.
Partners of the podcast "Business in Crisis" - the international technology holding TECHIIA, as well as the country's largest telecommunications operator "Kyivstar".
How are you doing now? From the outside, it may seem that you can open a bottle of champagne almost every day: the drug market is growing incredibly, and so is your business.
The business is really growing, it's true. It grows somewhere twice as fast as it grew before. But we grew well before the quarantine period: in 2019 we grew 6 times, taking into account seasonality. In December we grew by 30%, in January - by 35%, even more in February. Growth, apparently, was without quarantine.
Now, obviously, we are growing even faster. But there is no time or desire to open champagne at all. Our goal today is to provide the highest quality service, and it's not so easy when you grow twice a week. It is difficult to provide good service when the whole system is set up for X orders, and you have 3X orders. Therefore, our goal is, first of all, to do our job well, that current customers have become our loyal users in the future. We want to be a service that is recommended to friends, so this is now our main goal.
Scale fast is also not the easiest task. Tell us about the main difficulties or challenges you and your team now face.
Our biggest challenge is to build "uninhabited" technology: we make a product that should have a minimum of processing space for some human processes. And when we have, say, X volume of orders, we say we have a number of people who process something. And when orders become 3X, you can't take 3X people at once: they need to be trained, but this process takes weeks or even months to become high quality. Therefore, among the challenges that exist now is a super-accelerated transition to process automation.
In essence, we make technology when the system itself makes certain decisions for the person, does some data processing and communicates with customers. A good example is when you call a car in Uber, but you have no communication. We have a similar model, but a little more complicated. It's not easy to "go from point A to point B" with one driver. The order consists of many goods, these many goods need to be found in many pharmacies, to communicate with several couriers who do it. It's a complex system and we make it work without people.
It used to work in 80% of cases, and the remaining 20% required some human processing. Now these 20% have become extremely large, so we have to use the Pareto principle that we use for ourselves: among these 20% to highlight the most important, which will cover 80% of these 20%.
How much have people grown in the last month?
The core team has hardly grown because there is no time to grow. So far, we have grown only by hours, unfortunately. But we have two products: delivery and the "Take it yourself" option, when we suggest the nearest pharmacy where there is the necessary medicine. So in the first case, when it comes to delivery, the logistics department has almost doubled, by about 80%.
Is the number of orders you are currently processing your maximum? Will you not be able to process more orders or is there still a margin of safety?
As demand grew, we really had to make some unpopular decisions. The fact is that there are customers who can order 80 items that need to be collected in 20 pharmacies, some drugs are quite rare. Such an order can greatly slow us down. Therefore, we limited people in the number of ordered positions or did not allow to choose super-rare positions. We have limited some of our customers to fulfill orders for 95% of others.
Our capacity has increased 5 times since the beginning of quarantine. We can do much more than we could before. And we continue to improve processes, increase efficiency.
There are two limitations that I think can greatly weaken you. The first is that pharmacies do not bring the drugs that customers need. The second is the limitations: when there is a queue at the pharmacy, the courier has to wait. How much does it limit your growth?
It's less now, but the last two weeks of March have been terrible. Couriers in pharmacies could not get an order, in the pharmacies themselves there were problems with the availability of drugs and tracking of leftovers: first they said that the drug is there, and then it turned out that it was not.
We rebuilt the processes and informed people about possible delays and problems, but not everyone was understanding. This is difficult because we are very responsible about quality and when we can't do something, it goes very deep through us.
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