CarGo Relay: Parcels on Everyday Routes

The idea

Every weekday, thousands of people travel the same routes through Lausanne. CarGo Relay is a C2C parcel-delivery app that uses this everyday human flow: parcels travel with people who are already going that way, mostly on the busiest routes from Monday to Friday.

I was one of three co-founders, backed by EPFL Startup Support.

Route matching

Travellers share their current location, their usual destination and how they travel. Each mode gets parcels that fit it:

• Metro riders: parcels close to their route, near where they start and end
• Bikes: more flexible, with wider detours
• Cars: the most flexible, and the only option for large parcels

The matching runs on the Google Maps API.

What I built

I led the system design and built the product end to end:

• React Native app for senders and travellers
• FastAPI backend
• MariaDB for the data model

Result

By the end of 2024, CarGo Relay had ~5,000 registered users across universities and schools in Lausanne, and ~CHF 50,000 in revenue from a 10% commission on deliveries.

What I learned

• Build on behavior that already exists. People were already traveling these routes; the product only had to match parcels to them.
• Design for each mode. A metro rider and a driver can't take the same parcel, so the matching had to respect how people move.