Dublin has a very strong track record in innovation and that has been borne out once again this year with over half of the nominations for the country’s leading innovation awards coming from the capital.
One of the eight Dublin finalists in with a chance of winning the first prize of a €150,000 communications package in The Irish Times Innovations Awards is ‘Buymie’.
The company, which is based in Tallaght and claims to do for retail what ‘Deliveroo’ does for restaurants, has been nominated in the New Frontiers category.
Buymie has created an online shopping delivery service which is ideal for those who want to skip the weekly shop. The Buymie format involves customers using the app to order grocery and household items from large retailers such as Lidl and Tesco and have their items delivered in as little as one hour by their very own personal Buymie shopper.
For retailers, it offers a pre-built digital platform and the opportunity to plug into the on-demand grocery delivery market using a shared logistics network, thereby removing the need for large, up-front investment.
Company co-founder Devan Hughes has pointed to the huge growth in the ‘on-demand’ sector.
“Consumer demand for ‘on-demand’ groceries has sky rocketed, with year-on-year growth of 1,211 per cent in this channel versus 7.5 per cent growth in the traditional next-day delivery market. To be frank, Buymie has opened an entirely new channel for the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, which is proving to be an incredible growth opportunity for our retail and brand partners,” he said.
Intertrade Ireland and Enterprise Ireland have invested in the company while other backers include consumer goods giant Unilever, Dragon’s Den star Eamonn Quinn and Scott Weavers-Wright, who founded Kiddicare and then went on to run Morrisons online channel after the supermarket acquired his company for £70 million.
Category winners win a €10,000 communications package and go forward to compete for the overall Innovation of the Year Award and a top prize of a €150,000 comms package and a scholarship for two business courses at UCD Business School commencing in 2020.
This year marks the tenth year of the Awards which were established to showcase and reward excellence in innovation across a range of products and services. Sponsors include Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Skillnet Ireland, KPMG and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
The winners will be announced at a high-profile awards ceremony at the RDS in Dublin on November 5th.
