Think about if a sure sort of treatment you needed wasn’t accessible in your country and was costly to ship or acquire. Many individuals depend on pals or kinfolk touring to those countries to bring again gadgets that can not be bought of their nation, whether it’s jamon or an iPhone. Backpack connects customers with travelers who can deliver desired products again at discounted costs.

Backpack, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is a peer-to-peer market that connects consumers and travelers to empower shoppers to purchase overseas merchandise at a low cost. Shoppers get access to foreign merchandise by paying travelers coming to their country a payment to buy and ship the gadgets.

Backpack aggregates items you could search on the web site by way of Amazon and Ebay, or you can manually enter a link of any product you want with the worth. Travelers earn cash based mostly on the product’s size and dimensions and Fahim Aziz, co-founder and CEO, says on common per trip, travelers make up to $250, however by delivering a number of items.

On the positioning, there's a Travel possibility and a store possibility. The Shop possibility lets you find your product and request a “Backpack.” Customers can add merchandise remarks and point out the nation from which they need the product. Once your request goes in, a traveler has to assessment and verify the request, and the shopper pays a product price and traveler’s charge, stored in escrow by Backpack.

Backpack allows shoppers to pay via Paypal, test, wire transfer and localized cell fee strategies.

The Travel choice lets travelers share flight date and location. When a shopper’s request matches with the traveler’s location, the traveler gets a notification about the product. Ski gloves has six hours to accept or reject the request. To date, Aziz says extra that two thirds of requests are fulfilled, and more requests might be fulfilled as extra travelers sign up.

Backpack has been live since February, but a big part of its customer base is from Bangladesh, however it’s slowly seeping into China. Within the first week of going live, the web site received 70,000 hits from 86 countries, and has a 15 percent progress per week.