The Travelhorse team
The travel and tourism industries experienced the hardest hit during the COVID-19 outbreak. As countries closed their border and airlines cut down on routes, the number of travellers drastically dropped, directly affecting businesses of various sizes in the sector.
In the past few months, e27 has covered startups in the travel and tourism sectors and how they are dealing with this difficult time. We have published about Vietnam-based tour packages platform Triip who introduced StayHome Heroes campaign.
We have also named capsule hotel platform Bobobox as Startup of The Month for their ability to secure a US$11.5 million funding round and survived through enforced quarantine measures in the country.
This time, we are looking into how Travelhorse, a Singapore-based startup, deals with the challenge at the very early days of its operations.
Incorporated in January, the team at Travelhorse was developing a platform to connect travellers with local shops and businesses to store their luggage, when COVID-19 was discovered in Singapore.
The outbreak continued to threaten, forcing the government to introduce a circuit breaker (CB) measure to handle the situation, which was implemented in April.
At this rate, travellers and tourists –the potential customers that they originally wanted to target– were barely existing in the country.
“Before the CB was announced, we already have a network of 35 jockeys across Singapore and Southeast Asia. We saw this COVID-19 situation in Singapore worsen in the sense of numbers, and also the direction of the government policy. So we thought about how we can create value by rallying up local initiatives through our jockeys and our network,” Travelhorse Founder & CEO Scott Koh explains to e27 over a call.
So the startup introduced an F&B Dash and logistics delivery service, which had begun operating by the time the CB officially started.
“The decision was strategic in many senses. [We aim] to create added value for existing jockeys, and to onboard more jockeys into our network,” Koh says.
Collaboration matters
The change seemed to work for the startup, especially since they were not alone in their work to support local F&B businesses.
“When circuit breaker was introduced, Enterprise Singapore made an open call for F&B merchants [as they aim] to fund their delivery costs via partnership with three delivery giants: GrabFood, Deliveroo, and Foodpanda. They also made an open call for third party logistics to come and support this effort,” Koh says.
Travelhorse’s application for this programme was then approved.
Ever since then, the company has also expanded its logistic services to include packing and storage for students, professionals, or small business owners who have been displaced by the outbreak.
What is next?
The story of Travelhorse began when Koh struggled to find a convenient place to store his luggage when he arrived in Hong Kong in 2018 for a hackathon event. After dropping his luggage at a student hostel, he had to spend 4.5 hours to reach his destination as he had to take a reroute.
The luggage storage platform was then developed to help travellers reduce their travelling load, enabling them to explore the destination with ease and convenience.
When the interview happened, the company was still in wait-and-see mode regarding the future. But when asked specifically about the fate of the luggage storage service, Koh says that they intend to continue on developing it.
“In fact, we are still working on the development effort to create that platform. Moving forward, it will be our main business model,” he says.
When asked about how the startup deals with uncertainties and arising challenges, Koh stresses the importance of open communications and being responsive to changes.
“We are a team of five members and we aim to be very open in communications, and [to make decisions] based on the current situation,” he says.
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Image Credit: Travelhorse
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