New Moving Company MyCarrio Inaugurates Belval Office

Chronicle.lu recently sat down with Hiron Raja, founder of MyCarrio (mycarrio.com), to learn about his new moving company, the office of which was inaugurated in Esch-Belval last month.

Regarding the origins of MyCarrio, Hiron, who is originally from India and completed a PhD at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) last year, explained that the idea emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, after having seen elderly people who were prone to the virus going to the supermarket.

"We found the gap [in the market for] same day or on-demand delivery especially in Luxembourg," he explained. "We started mycarrio.com with the weekend shopping delivery to doorsteps. However, we did not get lot of orders (a couple of orders a week). Then, someone asked for moving boxes from Belval to Luxembourg [City]. We gradually added other services, like pick-up and drop-off, house moving (by van), man with a van, and furniture assembly and dismantling."

MyCarrio was officially set up on 23 November 2022, although the team had been working on the idea since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main initial target group was people wishing to do their shopping at the supermarket. As Hiron explained: "Most of our customers are expats. Luxembourg is multinational like that and we have served people of more than 20 nationalities. Most of our customers are English speakers; we have to get in to the French-speaking [market] too."

Concerning initial observations and challenges, Hiron acknowledged that "shopping bag delivery was not economical at the early stage." He added that the team had initially thought of creating a mobile application (rather than a website) but both demand and supply (drivers) were low. "Then, we started with a static website with a simple page, and then updated the website over time. The website is [now] fully automated with booking and price estimation."

The opening ceremony for MyCarrio's new office in Esch-Belval took place on 12 December 2022. Speaking about the decision to set up in Luxembourg, specifically in Esch-Belval, Hiron explained that the startup receives support from the University of Luxembourg, which provided the office space. "Since we have tested the idea, we thought we have to move on from idea testing stage to idea validation. Now we are confident that with efforts we can move forward," he confirmed.

Elaborating on the service(s) offered by MyCarrio, Hiron noted that the moving industry in Luxembourg is "quite unorganised". He continued: "To avail the service, we have to either phone them [existing moving companies], or send an email, and wait for their response, and to get the next availability sometimes we even have to wait for a week at least. And to negotiate the pricing, since none of the providers in Luxembourg providing that." Hiron added: "Our business model is very simple: we charge for the distance and time from the pick-up point to drop-off, thus provid[ing] transparency."

Currently, MyCarrio operates within Luxembourg and in nearby cities in the Greater Region such as Thionville (France), Arlon (Belgium) and Trier (Germany). The startup also provides international moving services with a van to or from Luxembourg, wishin the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA) and the United Kingdom (UK).

In the short term, MyCarrio aims to complete 1,000 moves or deliveries, as well as to launch a mobile application (currently in development) and onboard an additional 20 moving companies. Most of its customer base is currently business-to-consumer (B2C) but the startup hopes to enter the business-to-business (B2B) model, "providing moving services like office relocation or man with a van for four or eight hours especially for businesses."

Concerning long-term goals, MyCarrio aims to "make sure that customers are satisfied every time", explained Hiron. He elaborated: "Customer feedback is the most important for us to understand ourselves and improve the quality of the services. We want to digitalise completely the logistics sector (on-demand moving delivery by car and van), offer a single platform for all logistics needs…"

The MyCarrio team is currently composed of Hiron Raja, Snehajyoti Saha, Christian Ilechukwu, Vivek Gangwar, Vandana Pundir and Joseph Paulo Andig, as well as some students of the University of Luxembourg. Sara Cela and Prasanth Baboo also supported the startup in its various stages. The development team is made up of Balaji Subramaniyam, Lilly Packiyam, Balasakthi Thangapandiyan and Santhalakshmi.