The startup assault on the humble neighborhood store continues to intensify.
First came Bodega, the terribly named, and mostly misguidedstartup with its mission to bring the non-perishable necessities available at the corner store to the masses and “disrupt” the corner store.
Now there’s Robomart, which wants to bring the groceries, baked goods and prepared foods of the supermarket aisle to your doorstep with a white-labeled service for wholesalers and big box retailers.
The culmination of a ten-year vision from founder Ali Ahmed, Robomart is an autonomous grocery store department on wheels.
Robomart is the serial entrepreneur’s latest startup. Ahmed, who first conceived of the rolling grocery store concept while an employe at Unilever ten years ago, went on to found LuteBox, which was around the social sharing of media content.
From LuteBox, the London-based entrepreneur moved on to the now-defunct Dispatch, a competitor to the U.S.-based on-demand concierge services like Magic, which pitched a bespoke service where users could — for a fee — get almost anything their hearts desired (but you couldn’t get a tiger).
At its height, Dispatch had 1500 deliverers and the company received the most orders from folks who wanted grocery deliveries (this was in the early days of on-demand before Instacart, etc. had brought grocery delivery to the masses).
After investors bought Ahmed out of Dispatch, the entrepreneur moved to Santa Clara, Calif. to start Robomart.
“I believe we’re creating a new category,” Ahmed says. “We think we’re competing with the sidewalk robots.” In fact, Ahmed seems to be competing with the corner store — which offers the same fractional amount of goods with the argument of proximity and convenience.
Just as sidewalk robots are being met with friction in California, Robomart also expects to face some tough hurdles.Traffic and parking are probably the biggest among them.