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Recent Canada Post delivery woes have pushed last-mile delivery company Trexity to launch its new sister app, Trexity Go, aimed at customer-to-customer delivery. Alok Ahuja, CEO and co-founder of Trexity, told OBJ last week the company is finally debuting a C2C platform it’s been working on for years as Canadians grapple with the ongoing loss […]
Recent Canada Post delivery woes have pushed last-mile delivery company Trexity to launch its new sister app, Trexity Go, aimed at customer-to-customer delivery. Alok Ahuja, CEO and co-founder of Trexity, told OBJ last week the company is finally debuting a C2C platform it's been working on for years as Canadians grapple with the ongoing loss of Canada Post’s services.When Trexity launched in 2019, Ahuja said his team was already working on a C2C platform, but, in the wake of the pandemic, the company pivoted to focusing solely on last-mile delivery for small businesses. Almost a year ago, Canada Post employees started striking, affecting the Crown corporation’s deliveries to businesses and residents alike. Ahuja said the ripple effects of the strike pushed his team to speed up its plans for a C2C platform. “Two of our senior (developers) built this, almost like a hack project. One is called Zach and the other is Alex and they became known internally as ‘Zalex’. ‘Zalex’ formed this bond and said, ‘We’re going to build this,’” Ahuja said, adding Trexity co-founder and COO Rob Woodbridge took charge of overseeing the project.As a company that operates on a remote work model, Trexity brings its employees together for quarterly company retreats. It was at the most recent of these meetings that “Zalex” debuted Trexity Go to the team.“We just had our last retreat at Deerhurst (Resort) in Muskoka. Right at the end of the three days, we got a demo from ‘Zalex.’ They dropped Trexity Go on us and … everybody was in shock,” Ahuja said. “It was one of those moments where you know that you just saw something that’s going to change the way we operate.”A week later, the company had the app installed on workers’ phones and began testing it. “‘Zalex’ took all the feedback, fixed it and put it into the App Store.”Now, Trexity is offering its Go app to all users. Users can snap a photo of the item they want to send, enter delivery information and pay. A Trexity courier will then come pick up and deliver the item. Throughout the process, both sender and recipient can track the package in the app.Trexity Go is Trexity's customer-to-customer delivery solution. Image supplied.Ahuja said the platform will start by focusing on niche audiences such as customers who buy and sell through online marketplaces.“We all knew who was going to use this. We’re going to partner with Facebook Marketplace. We’ve been asked to partner with Kijiji. When people sell something, you don’t want a stranger coming to your house … so, it’s helping those marketplaces,” he said.Beyond people buying and selling items online, Ahuja said the Trexity Go app will be useful for business professionals to send important paperwork, busy parents sending things to their forgetful kids or a thoughtful person sending some homemade food to a loved one. “It’s built for all consumers coming into a moment where a lot of people are losing that flexibility of just putting something in the mail and not knowing when it’s going to get there,” Ahuja said. “It’s very much for those users that don’t have the mobilization to go everywhere because they don’t have a vehicle.” “Within the next six months, we’re really going to see whose hands this falls into and who we’re helping and what we’re moving.”One such interesting use case may be what former Assent chief executive Andrew Waitman, OBJ and the Ottawa Board of Trade’s 2024 CEO of the Year, called the “Trexity Go book club.”“He’s one of my mentors and he’s an avid reader,” Ahuja said of Waitman. “He’ll always give me a book to read … There’s a book called Jump by Larry Miller, and I really wanted Andrew to read it, but I know he would never go and get the book to read it. So, I took a picture, put it in an envelope and Andrew got the book. He sends me a text saying, ‘I love it. The platform was unbelievable … We’re going to start the 'Trexity Go book club.’”With the delivery complications that have arisen from ongoing Canada Post strikes, Ahuja said it was time to jump on the idea when it would make the most impact.“My wife says that I’m cheap, but I’ll say that I’m ‘capitally efficient.’ Unlike some tech companies, we didn’t want to just blow money at building a product for the sake of building a product. Everything we’ve done in the history of this company has been well thought through and methodically designed so that it would impact in the most maximum way possible … We knew the impact was there now when we saw the downfall of Canada Post,” he said.In the creation process for Trexity Go, Ahuja said his team studied Trexity’s competitors to pick up on the pros and cons of each and to look for what would separate the Ottawa company’s platform from the rest.“Our goal is to make this so easy (for the user). We’re studying and mapping friction points (present) to get something done and out of the door quickly. (Competing brands) have done a great job, but at the end of the day, those are all built in the United States, in San Francisco or Palo Alto,” Ahuja said. “Why can’t Canada have its own solution? Why can’t we move things within Canada (without having to) send all of our data to San Francisco? That was our priority and what makes us a big differentiator.”Ahuja said Trexity isn’t deviating from its core business, which remains last-mile delivery.“What was more of a task for us was having (Trexity Go) be a standalone product and having it be its own app, to work individually away from what we’re doing as a company. But what’s exciting about this is the fact that we’re going to get an opportunity to scale Trexity as a company, create more jobs and more opportunities for ‘Zalex’ to build up the product theme.”Trexity Go is just one of the company’s highlights in the pursuit of growth, Ahuja said. Looking ahead to the new year, he said Trexity will be partnering with “a large Fortune 500 company” as its delivery partner across Canada and into the United States. “I didn’t want to spin up millions of dollars and try to open up a whole new country,” he explained. “Instead, I wanted to do it in a very capital-efficient way and find a kind of big brother or big sister that was already there,” he said, adding the partner will likely be unveiled in December.Ahuja said the company will also be expanding its Canadian footprint in the new year and bringing on other partners.“We’re growing our zones within the cities that we’re (already) in. We’re looking to open up a few more markets in Canada and then States-side really soon. In Q1 of 2026, we’re going to be announcing some big partners … big-box stores that we’re going to be integrated in directly.”He added that these upcoming partnerships with larger companies are possible because of the reputation the firm has built working with small- and medium-sized businesses.“There’s power in numbers, and I think the power of growth and investment we made into smaller businesses in Canada is now allowing us to scale into (new) regions and (with) larger companies,” Ahuja said.There is lots to get excited about, he added, but for now, he is focusing on the upcoming holiday rush. “We’re just getting busy for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and then the Super Bowl of logistics, which is the holiday season.”
