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MKT6003 Entrepreneurial Marketing
Final Assessment: Take-Home Assignment
Instructions
Answer ALL questions
Start each question on a new page
Keep the answer to each question within 1,000 words in double line spacing
Put a reference list on the last page
Read the following case. Answer ALL questions.
GOGOX: The Story Behind the Start-up
“One morning we had to deliver 100,000 boxes and it was very chaotic. We decided we had to find a
solution,” said by Steven Lam Hoi-yuen, a Co-founder of GOGOVAN.
It was 2013 at the time, and ride-hailing platforms were gaining momentum internationally, but the
delivery industry in Hong Kong remained very traditional. People relied on call centers using radio
frequency systems to hire drivers for jobs. Goods distribution in such a way is inefficient. Lam and
his two fellow co-founders of GOGOVAN thought there must be a better way to do it. They came up
an idea of using an app to connect customers and available drivers. It gave birth to the first start-up in
Hong Kong specializing in delivery and moving services.
Steven Lam Hoi-yuen
One of the co-founders of GOGOVAN (now rebranded as
GOGOX).
GOGOX has now been expanded to mainland China,
Singapore, Korea, and India over 340 cities.
Starting with a WhatsApp group
When looking for a solution, Lam and his fellow co-founders realized they could work much more
effectively if they consolidated all of their most trusted drivers into one platform. At the time, they
had no intention of disrupting an entire industry as Uber was then doing in the U.S. They started
small – very small – creating a series of WhatsApp chat groups to use as platforms to post jobs for
the city’s best delivery drivers. “I didn’t even know what Uber was then,” said Lam. “We started to
formulate our product on our own.”
GOGOVAN’s innovative use of technology minimized the time and effort required for last-mile delivery, which kept
services at an affordable rate, propelling the start-up’s growth.
2
With this revelation, GOGOVAN changed the game. People can use the app to order vans directly in
a mere 15 to 20 seconds, where it previously took service centers 20 to 30 minutes alone to connect
customers with an available driver. In most metropolitan cities, some last-mile fleets are company-
owned, which are captive and used exclusively for the company’s own requirements.
However, a significant proportion are owner-operated, which are “individually owned or owned by a
small business owner with three to five vehicles.” “For example, in Hong Kong, 35,000 vans of the
70,000 registered vans fall into this category. Our business model is to… link the latter group of
vehicles to the ultimate end user in a far more efficient way through an app,” Lam explained.
In 2015, GOGOVAN had 18,000 van drivers on its app, in stark contrast to van-calling centers, which
had 50 to 1,000 vans in their databases. The GOGOVAN app revolutionized the logistics industry.
The Hong Kong’s first billion-dollar unicorn
Entering 2018, GOGOVAN raised a
whopping US$276.5 million over six
rounds of funding. Its latest round of
investment was in 2018 from a Series
D round, with investors including
InnoVision Capital and Alibaba’s
Cainiao.
GOGOVAN had established itself as
Hong Kong’s first billion-dollar start-
up via a merger with Chinese logistics
company 58 Suyun. This allowed the
company to further venture into China.
The company was rebranded as GOGOX, and is now promoting its new
products, GOGODELIVERY and GOGOBUSINESS.
1. Using Abell’s three-dimensional framework, how would you define the business of
GOGOVAN in the logistics industry? Identify not less than four customer groups in this
industry and critically discuss their needs. (30 marks)
2. In what ways does GOGOVAN redefine the logistics industry? Critically examine the
new market space created by GOGOVAN using the Four Actions Framework? (30 marks)
3. In the start-up case of GOGOVAN, what will you do to reconcile the differences between
the processes of new product development and customer development? (40 marks)
