Smart bag ad-tech Lumos joins forces with e-bike innovator Zoomo

Two Sydney-based companies transforming the delivery economy have teamed up to give gig riders extra income opportunities, with plans to roll out advertising-enabled smart bags across their respective networks.

The bags developed by LUMOS include hardy screens that can withstand a range of weather conditions, underpinned by digital technology that provides audience analytics and the re-targeting of ads at smartphones that have been in the riders' vicinity.

It is a technology that attracted $800,000 in seed funding for LUMOS in August, but now the company has been given an added boost by joining forces with e-bike group Zoomo, another local outfit that is much further along its scale-up trajectory with global customers including the UK's Just Eat and Amazon Wholefoods in the US.

At first the partnership will be just a pilot trial in Sydney and Melbourne, but LUMOS co-founder Eric Fan tells Business News Australia of ambitions to expand into Southeast Asia, Europe and the USA in 2023.

"We are excited about this partnership as it helps us to reduce carbon emission while delivering innovative mobile programmatic DOOH (Digital out of Home) campaigns for smart brands and businesses across Sydney and Melbourne," says Fan, who co-founded LUMOS with Cynthia Rahardja, Sidney Ramos, Jerry Yip and Anmol Nayak.

"Zoomo and Lumos are joining forces to be able to deliver more benefits to the gig economy community - we will continue to empower the delivery riders on the road today with these super awesome revenue-generating smart bags which enhance their on-road safety by providing something that’s bright and visible, especially during the nighttime.

"Zoomo is providing an avenue for their riders, for their customers, to sign up to the bag to use it and be able to receive that additional benefits from this partnership."

Fan says the parties are looking at co-branding in the future along the lines of a 'Zoomo bag powered by Lumos', while they are also collaborating on improving and standardising the smart bags to meet new gig work health and safety regulations.

Zoomo was founded five years ago by 2021 Sydney Young Entrepreneur Award Trailblazers Mina Nada and Michael Johnson, who were ranked 17th in last year's Australia's Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs List. Since inception the company has raised US$105.6 million (AUD$169.5 million) in funding, of which more than half came from a Series B last November, which was extended further in February.

The e-bike company's backers are numerous, including AirTree Ventures, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), Grok Ventures, Skip Capital, Collaborative Fund, SG Fleet (ASX: SGF) and more. 

In July, SG Fleet announced it would work on a go-to-market strategy with Zoomo to help broaden its range of electric solutions. This came one month after the Sydney trailblazer revealed the prototype of the Zoomo One, its highest performance utility e-bike to date.

At the time, co-founder Mina Nada described Zoomo One as a "Moped Killer".

"We have taken producing delivery-specific e-bikes to the next level with the Zoomo One, with its premium design, unmatched reliability, and advanced safety ensuring that both individual riders and businesses will reap the benefits of the world's best delivery e-bike," Nada said in June ahead of a US roll-out of the new design in the second half, to be followed by its market entry in UK and Europe in H2 2023.

"The playbook was ripped apart to ensure we made a vehicle for couriers by couriers. This meant putting a human centered design philosophy first and co-designing the vehicle with mechanics and riders to ensure premium durability and serviceability," added Zoomo's head of hardware Christopher Krainer.

"We did this by going deep with our customers to gather live data and feedback to ensure we created a vehicle that would exceed their expectations, whilst working in parallel with our mechanics to ensure designs were adjusted for ease of maintenance."