As the number of people in Australia living in apartments continues to increase, some of the simple things in life like getting packages delivered becomes a lot more difficult.
In an age of secure apartment buildings and online shopping, CEO of One Key Access, Chanel Costabir identified the need for a solution for both couriers and residents.
“One Key Access operates in the convergence of the PropTech and LogisticsTech space. Our contextual access control platform that automates courier access to the fragmented smart delivery ecosystem, to enable frictionless 24/7 deliveries,” she said.
“When I was working for Australia Post, I identified an opportunity for deliveries to be more streamlined to buildings and homes. Also, the emergence of the smart home delivery ecosystem is creating fragmentation, whereby you’ve got a lot of businesses creating great last-mile delivery solutions, however, they all have different delivery processes.
“If you think about it from a courier’s perspective, courier companies manage a massive workforce, which is built on efficiencies and streamlining processes. This is where we saw an opportunity for One Key Access to really be that middleware to make life easy for not only courier companies and residents, but also other access devices and parcel lockers.”
Digital master key
One Key Access is effectively developing a digital master key that will make life a lot easier for all involved.
“We sign-up delivery companies and provide each delivery driver with a One Key Access credential. This credential then provides access to any One Key Access enabled location on their delivery route, during their delivery time,” says Chanel.
“We are courier agnostic and device agnostic, so we will integrate with building access systems, parcel lockers and smart locks. The idea is that the delivery is a seamless experience for everyone involved, on both sides of the platform.”
Given the technical nature of the project and the many different parties involved, there were a range of challenges that Chanel and the team had to overcome.
“I think the first challenge was getting the courier companies all signed up. It’s always hard selling something when you don’t have a product to demonstrate,” she said.
“Beyond that now there’s two challenges that are to be expected. One is the approach to tech. What we’re trying to do is integrate with a number of different access systems. We have a great team and have developed many solutions for this. So right now, our focus is on deploying the solution that will work at scale.
“The other challenge is selling the solution into existing buildings. This will become easier as we grow and social proof starts to activate. ”
One Key Access was built with and invested in by Antler, a global early-stage VC platform, and Chanel believes it played a huge role in the growth and development of the business.
“For us having Antler on board as an investor is amazing. They have been great in providing advice, refinement of our proposition and connections to advisors,” she said.
Going forward, Chanel believes One Key Access is positioned to grow given the scope of the market.
“Where we see the real opportunity is in our creation of the contextual access control category. We’re starting with removing the friction from deliveries, not only to apartments but to any building, any home and any smart delivery device,” she said.
“In my opinion, the friction that exists in last-mile delivery is a broken link in the e-commerce value chain. We want to mend this as a first order of business.
“One Key Access is designed to be global and we are expanding into international markets.”
● StartupDaily is the official media partner of Antler in Australia.
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