Kedu is a company based in Dubai that offers a range of products and services including motion sensors and lighting controls for buildings. Obaid al Qahash, the managing director of Kedu, talks about his company's move into parcel delivery:
What was your focus when you started the company?
Building management systems that automate controls of lighting, air-conditioning systems, security systems like motion sensors. We research the market for available products from Australia, China and [elsewhere], and get the best breed of products, import them and install them.
You've now brought in a number of different products from other countries. How do you sort through the ideas?
We have created an open-space environment in our office. All of us sit together. We don't have separate offices. Every member of our team has an input, and I would say after two years every member of our team came up with a product that we are selling today.
And how do you pick which ideas to pursue?
Once an employee is part of our team, we sit together and we show them the products we have and the types we'd like to adopt. They start around at different companies - what do they have in terms of automation, cost reduction, energy conservation? They come back with a list of products. We have a committee, not formal, but we agree on which products we'd like to explore further, and what is not suitable. We're a group of 10 employees. Really, democracy is much easier at this stage.
During this process your team discovered an automatic delivery machine that you've branded Parzel. What's unique about it?
This concept is relatively new. It didn't exist 10 years ago. The machine can be located at different places, just like an ATM. It has a touch-screen control. Let's say a courier company delivers something into the box. The second they close the box you get an e-mail and SMS with a one-time PIN. This PIN can be used to collect the parcel. No keys, no locks. You can also take the parcel there, and the courier would come to collect it.
There are three test machines in Dubai. Will there be more?
We're looking to deploy another 10 within the next month. To bring it to the Middle East is not an easy thing. It took us around 18 months to test the product. It is expensive. Part of our test was during the summer, in heat outdoors, to see how it will work. We do have a warehouse we leased for this purpose, to test some of these solutions.
When do you cut your losses if Parzel doesn't take off?
We're quite optimistic that this will work. We don't expect to be at a point where we cut our losses and step away from this. We know at this stage we don't expect any demand. We know it's part of educating the consumer base of the product and how does it work. We do have a lot of interested corporate and government entities.
