Antoine Berghen, Co-founder of YABE;
Credit: © Kaori Anne Jolliffe / Silicon Luxembourg
Luxembourg startup Yabe has launched in Luxembourg City and the French cities Rennes and Nancy, with others set to follow.
In an interview with Silicon Luxembourg, Cyrille Derouaz and Antoine Berghen announced the launch of Yabe, a platform designed to revitalise local commerce through an application that searches and finds items for consumers, within their neighbourhood.
The decline of convenience stores has been accentuated during the COVID-19 crisis, which also revealed the urgency of a change that requires agility and innovation. It has given rise to needs and initiatives, as some businesses have adapted with the means and skills at their disposal.
“People buy online and have the upper hand to decide everything”, explained Antoine Berghen, co-founder of Yabe with Cyrille Derouaz (Synergie Luxembourg), based in Luxembourg. “An online business is a reverse business. Yabe wanted to take the best of both worlds. Cyrille started from the idea that the ‘Yabers’ are the ones who don’t have time to wander for hours in the city, pay for a parking lot and only to end up not being sure about what they are looking for and eventually order it”.
The web application (soon to be available on Android) allows consumers to post their request directly online. Merchants who are members of the platform will confirm if they have the product or not. This allows them to manage their stock of goods and to optimise the “off-peak times” which are increasingly long in small businesses. The customer places an order and can then come and pick up the product in the store, chat with humans (rather than chatbots), without waiting and be assured that the product is available.
Antoine Berghen continued: “The concept takes on its full meaning in medium-sized cities with 100 to 250,000 inhabitants. This is the scale in which the problems of the attractiveness of city centres are focussed. Beyond that, the population uses the car less and customers move around more easily on foot or by public transport in local shops".
After Luxembourg, Rennes and Nancy, other cities will follow in launching Yabe in the coming months.
This information has been adapted from an article in Silicon Luxembourg.
