How re.life is disrupting the transportation market

For over a decade there has been a steady migration of every-day services to apps on our phones. From the countless food delivery companies to the simplification of banking, to Uber changing the way people move around, we are increasingly interacting with the world via our smartphones. Now the Sharjah-based company, re.life says it is changing the way people move items.

Launched with a mission to help consumers, businesses and society benefit from digital transformation, re.life is digitalising essential services. Leveraging its next-generation digital ecosystem, the company launched its first app - re.life collect - which aims to provide reliable, on-demand logistics transportation for businesses and residents in the UAE. According to the company, the app seeks to replace the traditional collection services with a digital platform that’s far more secure and provides instant access for logistics transport services with pricing based on distance and complexity. Much like Uber does for moving people.

Consumers who want to transport bulky, heavy items such as furniture or appliances will have the choice of engaging independent operators, small-scale service providers or moving and transportation companies via re.life collect, which also offers its services to residents who are also looking to move into a new apartment or a villa, providing one-tap access to trucks of different sizes, a driver, and optional moving crew.

Through this app, the company says users can take advantage of services from reliable movers and packers, including furniture dismantling and reassembly and a handyman for drilling, wall hangings and installation of white goods. Individuals and companies need not waste time and money involved in conducting online searches and calling up moving and transportation companies for information and quotes. The app has a fast response service that lets the users choose when and where they want items collected for pick-up and drop-off, with the addition of live tracking capabilities.

For users in in Dubai, re.life collect also offers the option of sustainable disposal services for bulky and heavy items. “There’s currently a serious issue in the UAE when it comes to disposing of bulky items. With a lack of places to throw away heavy objects, many people often end up just dumping next to bins and letting them become unsightly blight on streets and neighbourhoods. For those with a social conscience who call one of the existing junk collection companies, they are increasingly unreliable and often are unwilling to show up. If they do agree a pickup, they’ll sometimes ask customers to deliver the bulky items to their facility or to an inconvenient location. It’s a process that is not conducive to getting UAE residents to recycle or dispose responsibly.”

Even when items are disposed of, the majority end up in landfills, which is unsustainable, says the company, adding that by using re.life collect, users can reliably dispose of unwanted clutter knowing that their junk items will undergo processing for material recovery and be recycled.

re.life collect also offers businesses and its enterprise clients the choice of either booking the “Move” service and choosing the “Rent-A-Truck” service. The Move service allows Enterprise clients to move heavy, bulky items from one location to another, helping them optimise their supply chain and schedule collections and track deliveries using the on-demand digital application. The app also allows to Rent-A-Truck for one full day to transport their bulky items and shipments from one location to another including a helper and installer to assist with the move and any installation needs.

By uniting independent operators and small-scale service providers under a single, digitalised platform, re.life collect is transforming the logistics sector, says the company. The app has already been installed over 12,000 times and has made over 4,000 trips in the last quarter alone. Major UAE-based companies have benefited from the service including e-commerce companies, waste management companies, furniture companies and SMEs.

By providing an app for door-to-door transportation of bulky, heavy goods such as a piece of furniture or white goods, it’s changing the way people move items, especially in the second-hand goods market. For these bulky items that are slated for disposal, the service is ensuring that they don’t go to a landfill site but instead are recycled.

re.life has partnered with Union Paper Mills UAE and Zero Waste Recycling UAE and items are delivered to their facilities for material recovery and recycling. They are sorted out in the yard and are checked to see what material can be reused and recycled and taken to the proper facilities, with many being brought back to life through other products.

Following the success of re.life collect – the company’s first app, re.life market was launched. The platform serves as a virtual mobile marketplace for business-tobusiness buying and selling of recovered commodities including cardboard and paper; glass; ferrous and nonferrous metals, plastic, rubber, textiles and wood.

Trading of recyclables, redundant inventory or scrapped goods is often a tiresome and time-consuming process with haggling, negotiation, and a seemingly endless back and forth between buyers and sellers. Then there’s the added cost of dealing with a middleman. According to the company, since launching, re.life market has accelerated the efficiency of how buyers and sellers of recovered commodities do business. Via the app, large-scale sellers offer their range of recycled goods and buyers get direct access, eliminating the need for a middleman and streamlining trading activity. This digital ecosystem is the first product of its kind operating in the region, and is said to have disrupted the market.

“re.life market cuts out the middleman and introduces a 100 percent transparent market-driven bidding process,” says Salim Sultan Al Owais, Chief Executive Officer of re.life. “We connect buyers and sellers via a unified all-access platform that is reimagining the traditional auction space for a new fully agile digital era.

“The virtual marketplace transforms unwanted goods into profitable commodities via a real-time interface that eliminates unnecessary paperwork,” he adds, pointing out how the app’s simplicity is one of the key things that’s driving its success. “The benefits for traders include access to thousands of qualified buyers and sellers in specialised material categories, minimal paperwork and no middleman fees with bid transparency for fair market value pricing.”

There are already over 150 commercial buyers and sellers onboard the platform, and via trading activities, recyclables that have been uploaded are commanding higher prices than typical . The compounded growth rate for re.life market since its release has been over 700 percent.

“We’re now in an increasingly digital economy with a growing expectation of convenience and immediacy. But now the next-generation apps from re.life are simplifying and disrupting the marketplace for both B2B buying and selling of recovered commodities, and how people move, or dispose of, bulky items.”