Rent a mum, or how about a pet? Sharing economy apps stretch boundaries
If you yearn for some home-made soup, you can hire a mum to cook some; if you fancy having a pet for the holidays, it’s no problem in Japan. To proponents of the sharing economy this is logical, but others may disagree
Miss your mother’s home-made soup? There’s an app where you can “rent a mum” to cook some for you. Need someone to courier a package at 2.30am? Looking for a pet dog for an Instagram project? There are apps for those too.
The sharing economy has moved well beyond ride sharing and renting spare rooms. And that makes perfect sense to Parkson Yip Tak-yin, vice-president of strategic business development at US-listed Sharing Economy International, which launched BuddiGo this month.
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BuddiGo’s delivery service relies on a network of “buddies” who practically become couriers while commuting. It’s basically about trip sharing, Yip says.
“As an example, the buddy nearby your location has to go to work in [Hong Kong’s] Central [business district] and you give him HK$20 [US$2.50] to help you deliver something to, or buy something from, Central,” he explains. “The HK$20 can help subsidise his transport cost and save you the trouble of going to Central in person for the errand.”
With millions of commuters making journeys across the length and breadth of Hong Kong daily, in Yip’s utopian vision of universal sharing everybody can be a paid helper and underutilised manpower put to full use.
