Ones to Watch: Kollect

COO/Co-founder/Head of Product, John Hegarty; CEO/Co-founder, John O’Connor; CSO/Co-founder/Head of Business Development, Robbie Skuse

In our Ones to Watch section, we highlight some of the top movers and shakers in Ireland. This week we feature Kollect.

What is it?

Kollect‘s business model is similar to mytaxi, the on-demand taxi platform, but instead of moving people, Kollect moves waste. They have three verticals: Bin Collections, Skip Hire and Junk Removal. Their company mission is to create simple, convenient and efficient ways to collect and recycle waste; innovative customer service and creating consumer delight. Customers book waste collections through Kollect’s booking engine and subcontract to their waste collection partners. Kollect finds the next truck passing your home and arranges the pick-up for you allowing you to pay only when you need a collection.

Who’s behind it?

Kollect was launched in December 2015 by John O’Connor, Robbie Skuse and John Hegarty. It was completely bootstrapped and they now have a workforce of 12 full-time employees. With specialised skills in sales, digital marketing, search-engine optimisation, development and customer success. The team has extensive experience in the waste industry, and using technology has identified their unique solution.

How is it funded?

Kollect has been bootstrapped with personal money from the founders getting the project off the ground. Kollect has picked up money from the Competitive Start Fund offered by Enterprise Ireland, won InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn Regional Competition, and are currently on the Climate-KIC Accelerator run by Sustainable Nation Ireland. Outside of these three funding competitions, Kollect has grown to 12 full-time employees on its own cashflow and are about to close an investment round which will help them to scale the product to national level. The investment round is expected to close late 2017 and will help with growth early in 2018. This will also allow Kollect to start testing the product in international markets.

Future plans?

Kollect has identified its niche and tested the market and its product over the past year. Kollect plans to move out to two new markets by the end of 2017. Kollect will then look to scale up faster in 2018 and become available in all cities and large towns throughout Ireland. Kollect will also focus on its software and look to bring its booking engine to the UK in 2018.